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Finisher #10 to complete the list
1089
Albums Rated
3.29
Average Rating
100%
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2010s
Favorite Decade
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Top Origin
Wordsmith
Rater Style ?
136
5-Star Albums
61
1-Star Albums
Breakdown
By Genre
By Decade
By Origin
Albums
You Love More Than Most
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
| Triangle | 5 | 2.71 | +2.29 |
| Peggy Suicide | 5 | 2.77 | +2.23 |
| A Wizard, A True Star | 5 | 2.83 | +2.17 |
| 69 Love Songs | 5 | 2.84 | +2.16 |
| I’m a Lonesome Fugitive | 5 | 2.85 | +2.15 |
| Apple Venus Volume 1 | 5 | 2.85 | +2.15 |
| Apocalypse Dudes | 5 | 2.9 | +2.1 |
| Want One | 5 | 2.91 | +2.09 |
| The Libertines | 5 | 3 | +2 |
| Untitled (Black Is) | 5 | 3.05 | +1.95 |
You Love Less Than Most
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hounds Of Love | 1 | 3.61 | -2.61 |
| Talking Heads 77 | 1 | 3.56 | -2.56 |
| Blood Sugar Sex Magik | 1 | 3.5 | -2.5 |
| Either Or | 1 | 3.38 | -2.38 |
| Parklife | 1 | 3.38 | -2.38 |
| Live And Dangerous | 1 | 3.32 | -2.32 |
| The Specials | 1 | 3.3 | -2.3 |
| Homework | 1 | 3.29 | -2.29 |
| Private Dancer | 1 | 3.29 | -2.29 |
| The Sensual World | 1 | 3.17 | -2.17 |
Artists
Favorites
| Artist | Albums | Average |
|---|---|---|
| Led Zeppelin | 5 | 4.8 |
| Bob Dylan | 7 | 4.57 |
| Beatles | 7 | 4.57 |
| David Bowie | 9 | 4.44 |
| The Rolling Stones | 6 | 4.5 |
| Arcade Fire | 3 | 5 |
| U2 | 4 | 4.5 |
| Pink Floyd | 4 | 4.5 |
| Creedence Clearwater Revival | 3 | 4.67 |
| Simon & Garfunkel | 3 | 4.67 |
| The White Stripes | 3 | 4.67 |
| Beck | 3 | 4.67 |
| Bob Marley & The Wailers | 3 | 4.67 |
| Muddy Waters | 2 | 5 |
| OutKast | 2 | 5 |
| Kendrick Lamar | 2 | 5 |
| Stevie Wonder | 4 | 4.25 |
| Neil Young | 4 | 4.25 |
| Jimi Hendrix | 3 | 4.33 |
| Marvin Gaye | 3 | 4.33 |
| Black Sabbath | 3 | 4.33 |
| Beastie Boys | 3 | 4.33 |
| Michael Jackson | 3 | 4.33 |
Least Favorites
| Artist | Albums | Average |
|---|---|---|
| Kate Bush | 3 | 1.33 |
| Dexys Midnight Runners | 3 | 1.33 |
| Pere Ubu | 2 | 1 |
| Elvis Costello & The Attractions | 4 | 1.75 |
| The Fall | 3 | 1.67 |
| Elliott Smith | 2 | 1.5 |
| The Mothers Of Invention | 2 | 1.5 |
| Bee Gees | 2 | 1.5 |
| Orbital | 2 | 1.5 |
| Christina Aguilera | 2 | 1.5 |
| Blur | 3 | 2 |
| Talking Heads | 4 | 2.25 |
| Björk | 4 | 2.25 |
Controversial
| Artist | Ratings |
|---|---|
| Fleetwood Mac | 5, 2 |
| Rufus Wainwright | 2, 5 |
| Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band | 1, 4 |
| The Beach Boys | 5, 2, 4 |
5-Star Albums (136)
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Popular Reviews
Stevie Wonder
5/5
After we'd lived in our current house for about 6 or 7 years, I found a taqueria 4 miles away that blew my mind. The burritos, the sauce - incredible. My first time eating it, it was so good that I wanted to punch everybody that lived around me in the face for not telling me about this hidden gem. I wasted the better part of a decade not knowing that the best green sauce I've ever had was right around the corner. There's really no excuse for not finding it myself, but why didn't you tell me about it, you jerks? That taqueria is this album. Best track: Sir Duke
63 likes
Beatles
5/5
This is, no hyperbole, the greatest album of all time. It's the last one the Beatles made all together, and they almost tore each other apart doing so. There are tracks where Lennon doesn't appear, tracks where McCartney doesn't feature as prominently as he would have previously, and tracks where you can almost feel the frustration. In spite of it all, what they put together was incredible and, as always, greater than the sum of its parts. Here Comes the Sun is George Harrison's best work. I Want You (She's So Heavy) is a typical complex contribution from John. Paul took "some crap John wrote in India" and weaved it together with some of his own material to make the masterpiece that is the Abbey Road medley. Ringo...well, Octopus's Garden is pretty good, as far as Ringo's stuff goes. He did finally get a solo, which is nice. The album is so packed that I haven't even mentioned several other greats: Come Together, Something, and Because are all-timers. Best track: the medley
62 likes
Morrissey
2/5
Rejected alternate titles: (1) "Morrissey's Pseudo-Intellectual Musings About the State of the World, Delivered with the Subtlety and Nuance of a Monkey Operating a Chainsaw," (2) "In Which Morrissey Paradoxically Accuses Other People of Being Boring," (3) "Morrisey Finds a Way to Whine About His Press Clippings on What Feels Like Every Song," (4) "We give up, Morrissey - just put something that sounds like you're simultaneously threatening and seducing the consumer, and we'll Photoshop a Tommy Gun into your hand later. Signed, The Producers." Best track: First of the Gang to Die
59 likes
Les Rythmes Digitales
2/5
The book says that this album is "[f]aux French electronica at its best," which leads me to several questions. Why does faux French electronica exist, and why are we keeping tabs on it? Is this really the exemplar of the genre, and if so, what does bad faux French electronica sound like? Who is the target audience for this? If life is truly meaningless, and the human condition is to ascribe meaning to it, why is the conclusion "Eat, drink, and be merry" also something that an animal can do with no self-reflection? Are animals simply beings who have achieved enlightenment? If nihilism is constructed on paradoxes, is it any less true? What compels an artist to take a decent-sounding track and add a bunch of nonsensical sound effects on top of it? Best track: Damaged People
52 likes
Sugar
3/5
This album sounds like what an AI would output if you fed it a bunch of 90s alt-rock and told it to provide a representative sample. It's not bad, but I don't understand why it's on the list. Best track: Hoover Dam
51 likes
1-Star Albums (61)
All Ratings
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
2/5
The first song was pretty good, which got my hopes up. The rest of it was /r/im14andthisisdeep dominionist bullshit sung slowly with a piano
Kanye West
5/5
No one man should have all that power
Japan
3/5
Some solid stuff here, but sometimes it drifts into a bad Bowie impression backed by saxophones
Manu Chao
4/5
I expected to say "I respect this, but it's not for me" and call it a day, but it was way more listenable than I expected. Plus, who can resist a lyric like "Welcome to Tijuana / Tequila, sexo, y marijuana"? Best track: Welcome to Tijuana.
Elliott Smith
1/5
Double-tracked whisper singing is my kryptonite. Best track: Pictures of Me.
Dwight Yoakam
1/5
Dwight Yoakam was probably the first artist I ever hated. I listened to a lot of country radio when "Pocket of a Clown" came out, and I couldn't change the station fast enough whenever I heard his voice. This album did nothing to sway me. Best track: Send Me the Pillow.
David Holmes
2/5
I respect the skill that goes into making this kind of music, but the repetition kills me. 90% of the album was like a chisel being hammered into my skull. However, the one track I liked, I really liked. Best track: Don't Die Just Yet.
Johnny Cash
4/5
Johnny Cash is such a badass. I enjoyed learning about Glen Sherley, the inmate who wrote the final song on the album. Best track: Folsom Prison Blues.
Saint Etienne
3/5
90s synth + 60s pop = this album. Atmospheric feel that is mostly pleasant and sometimes jarring. Inoffensive and safe. Best track: People Get Real.
Ghostface Killah
4/5
Cocaine rap isn't my favorite thing, but the lyricism is on point. Best track: The Champ.
Cream
5/5
This album makes me want to drop acid. Best track: Sunshine Of Your Love.
Run-D.M.C.
4/5
They changed the game. Best track: Walk This Way.
Isaac Hayes
3/5
Huge respect for Hayes. However, one of the problems with releasing a four-track album is that when one of them starts with a 9 minute monologue, it sort of brings the whole thing down. Best track: Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic.
Cocteau Twins
4/5
Dream pop sung by an unintelligible Scottish woman never sounded so good. Best track: Iceblink Luck
The Verve
3/5
Before they found their sound on "Urban Hymns," The Verve was an Oasis clone (maybe after, too, but just not as much). Mostly boring. Best track: This Is Music
Tangerine Dream
2/5
This avant garde ambient album is innovative and influential, and should be celebrated for that. It's also mostly unlistenable. It belongs on the Stranger Things soundtrack, but I don't want to hear it otherwise. I did learn the word "krautrock" today, so that's something. Best track: Sequent C
Moby
5/5
I love everything about the story of this record, from Moby thinking it was going to be his last work before he had to get a real job to the fact that it took months to catch on. It's just bangers front to back. Best track: Porcelain.
The Who
3/5
Depending on who you read, this is either the best concept album of all time, or else the gimmick is a distraction from a weak collection of songs. I tend toward the latter, but it's not as if there isn't anything redeemable here. I find the concept distracting and not particularly well done. Best track: I Can See For Miles
The Beau Brummels
5/5
The soundscapes and lyrics are densely packed into the very brief songs, which are an expert mix of folk rock and psychedelia. This album caught me completely by surprise. Best track: The Wolf of Velvet Fortune
XTC
3/5
The Wikipedia page for this album compares it to both "Smile" and "Abbey Road." It's not nearly that interesting. My opinion of it improved after a second listen, but not appreciably so. Best track: Sacrificial Bonfire
Buzzcocks
4/5
Buzzcocks summed up the mission statement of punk right in the exact middle of this album: "I hate modern music/Disco, boogie, pop/They go on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on/How I wish they would stop." This shit rocks. Best track: Sixteen
Doves
4/5
The word I keep coming up with is "almost." This album wants so desperately to be an epic, atmospheric magnum opus, but it's...not quite that. Hell of a try, though. Best track: Satellites
The Young Gods
2/5
You never know if you truly like something until you try it, and now I can say with confidence that French industrial rock songs about period blood are not for me. Best track: Les enfants
Morrissey
3/5
It's okay. Best track: Used to Be a Sweet Boy
John Lennon
4/5
It's so much more than its title track. Demerit for explicit references to Yoko. Best track: Gimme Some Truth
Venom
3/5
Intelligible metal is good metal. I feel like this album could have benefited from a producer saying, "Hey, this would be much more listenable if you dialed it back by 5 or 10 percent." Then again, what kind of metal band listens to that kind of advice? Best track: Don't Burn the Witch
The Replacements
4/5
Paul Westerberg's voice is so cool. Best track: Unsatisfied
Funkadelic
4/5
Banger after banger. I had to deduct from the final score because of the copious fart drops in Wars of Armageddon. Best track: Super Stupid
Don McLean
4/5
Fantastic songwriting top to bottom. One reason I'm glad for this project is that I never would have listened to anything of his beyond the title song. Best track: American Pie
B.B. King
4/5
I don't love live albums. Cheering, little stories told to keep the crowd interested while instrumental changes are made, background noises - these are things I don't care to listen to when I put on some music at home or in the car. This album is one of the worst offenders from that standpoint. People whistle and cheer throughout. At one point early on, B.B. laughs at a comment somebody makes, so the crowd spends the next 2-3 songs making pithy comments after every sung line, trying to get some acknowledgement. Makes me want to tear my hair out. At the same time, I get why, if he's only going to get one entry on this list (?!), it would be a live album. The guy played 250+ shows a year for decades. The musicianship is off the charts (of course), and it feels like an honor to spend a little over half an hour with the King. I just wish it were under better circumstances. Best track: Please Love Me (because it has the least crowd noise)
Le Tigre
4/5
Another punk/pop punk/post-punk band that I've only ever heard of and never really given a chance. Le Tigre come out of the blocks swinging and don't let up until they've left a trail of destruction in their wake. They've got a Rudy Giuliani protest song that's relevant 21 years later. Best track: Deceptacon
1/5
Starts with the fucking Devo guy singing "yeah, yuh-yuh-yeah yeah yeah!" over and over, moves on to the least essential Rolling Stones cover in history, and somehow goes downhill from there. All of the thumbs down. Best track: Space Junk
Beach House
5/5
I put every single track on my 1001 Albums playlist. For me, this album is the gold standard of dream pop. I could listen to it all day. Best track: Zebra
Can
2/5
The problem with experiments is sometimes they fail. I was vibing with this music, berating myself for judging another album by its genre, when all of a sudden I was assaulted with a 17 and half minute song that sounded like a monkey humping a didgeridoo, following by 11 and a half minutes of eastern strings accompanied by tiny men who crawl up your nose and dance upside down on the bottom of your brain. How many krautrock albums are on this stinking list? Best track: Halleluhwah
David Bowie
5/5
Ziggy Stardust before he became Ziggy Stardust. Inventive, creative, and a joy to listen to. Best track: Life On Mars?
Public Enemy
5/5
Chuck D delivers as always. Flava Flav is at the top of his game. Every track is a heater. It's rowdy, rude, and in your face. It's also one of the most culturally influential albums of all time. This one is an all-timer. Best track: Fight the Power
Sepultura
3/5
There are moments when this thrash metal band uses its incredible technical ability to allow the speed with which they play to generate some forward momentum, but mostly they're happy to mindlessly assault the senses. What disappoints me most is they show flashes of something approaching interesting, but won't commit to it. Best track: Desperate Cry
The Rolling Stones
3/5
Sorry to be Americentric, but the US version, which includes Paint it Black and ditches some of the less creative tracks of this album, is way better and more mature sounding than the UK version. As it is, it feels like they're on the verge of breaking out, but not quite there. Best track: Doncha Bother Me
The Style Council
2/5
I'm not really sure why this album is on the list. It's jazz/easy listening that isn't particularly innovative or influential. Even the review in the book damns it with faint praise. It's not bad, I guess? Best track: You're The Best Thing
The Monkees
2/5
Notable because they played their own instruments for the first time like the big boys that they are. It also sold well. It's insane that this album, which sounds like it came out in 1962, was the #2 best-selling album during the Summer of Love. Best track: Shades of Gray
Drive-By Truckers
4/5
This album is massive in both literal size and in scope. I feel like I could write three reviews: one about the sound, one about the Lynyrd Skynyrd metanarrative, and one about the attempt to rehabilitate the Southern image in the popular imagination. I'll focus on the last, because it's the most interesting. It's a noble attempt, and they mostly succeed, but they try a little to hard to have it both ways (i.e. "the duality of the Southern Thing"), and while the effort is respectable, I don't love that there are no less than three songs that lionize or at least soften George Fucking Wallace. Sure, they're being ironic when they celebrate that "George Wallace stared them Yankees down," but it's a hell of a singable line that's no doubt sung by a certain subset of their fandom with gusto, a fact they well recognize themselves later on: "few saw beyond the rebel flag/And this applies not only to their critics and detractors/but also their fans and followers." Patterson Hood wants so badly to redefine what it means to be a Southern man, but he can't help but throw a bone to the peanut gallery he himself happily dismisses. I found myself respecting this album more and more as I listened to it, but ultimately it's got some fundamental flaws that it can't fully overcome. One note about the sound: It's damn good. Best track: Dead, Drunk and Naked
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
4/5
Gets sappy at times (Teach Your Children) and the addition of Neil Young isn't always strictly a positive (Helpless), but they're legends for a reason, and they pulled out some great ones for this collaboration. Of course, their best offering comes courtesy of Joni Mitchell. Best track: Woodstock
Talking Heads
3/5
Innovative? Yes. Influential? Eh, maybe. Throw it on the heap of albums that are notable, but not necessarily a great listen. Also, it reminds me of that terrible Matt Damon movie about tiny people. Bet track: Seen and Not Seen
Rage Against The Machine
5/5
I still feel like I'm getting away with something whenever I listen to this album. Best track: Know Your Enemy
Muddy Waters
5/5
This album is credited with introducing Chicago-style blues to a white audience and influencing the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Angus Young, and more. Its footprint is so massive that it can't be overstated, and it's easy to see why. Waters starts with some blues standards and slowly turns up the heat until the crowd is going nuts. He plays his penultimate song twice, reportedly exhausting himself to the point that Otis Spann had to sing the final number. It's an expert balance of frenetic energy and casual blues musicianship. Just incredible. Best track: I've Got My Mojo Working - Pt. 2
Amy Winehouse
4/5
There's a certain morbid curiosity here that reminds me of reading David Foster Wallace's thoughts on suicide. Maybe if Amy would have said yes to rehab, she'd still be around, but would we even know who she was? Best track: Rehab
Bob Dylan
5/5
The greatest songwriter of all time remade his image with this album, going electric for the first time in album format. It feels like you could write a thesis on each song, and probably somebody has, but they're also just a joy to kick back and absorb. This one will be high on my "Best of" list for sure. Best track: Like a Rolling Stone
The Offspring
4/5
The Offspring are a bit of a mystery to me. They're clearly capable of elevating and in some ways redefining punk, but often content to settle down and succumb to the laziest tropes of the genre. Fortunately, most of their best work is captured in one album. If you were to make a true best of compilation, you might grab one or two from elsewhere, but the collection would start and end with Smash. It's filled with allusions and wordplay that reward repeated listens, and you'll want to listen again, because it fucking rocks. I don't know if it's a shame that they couldn't replicate that success or a blessing that they did it once. Best track: Come Out and Play
Simply Red
1/5
Conjure every cliche you can think of when I say the words "Mid-80s adult contemporary music." This is that and more. I had to take three breaks while listening to this 45 minute album. Best track: Heaven
Jorge Ben Jor
3/5
Catchy as hell. Some of the lyrics are pretty clever, from what I could tell by reading them on Google Translate, but it doesn't really come across in the music, so I'm hesitant to give a higher score. A worthy entry that I probably won't think about again. Best track: Ponta de Lança Africano (Umbabarauma)
The Magnetic Fields
5/5
I had a ton of trepidation going into this 3 hour listen. There's some filler, and not every song is a winner, but the bottom line is that this ambitious project worked. Stephin Merrit subverts expectations, both lyrically and musically, at every turn. It feels like the musical version of the play in Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York, a sprawling epic that grows and grows until it eats itself. I mean that in the best way. It's easy to get lost in the massive sea of songs, and I think that's the intent. Best track: The Book of Love
Laura Nyro
2/5
Standard 60s blue-eyed soul pop with an occasional dash of Gershwin-esque jazz and an extra helping of inane lyrics. Boring. Best track: Luckie
Johnny Cash
4/5
Some of the best covers ever made, but don't overlook the originals. What a legend. Best track: Hurt
Ministry
1/5
Repetition CAN be artistic. In this case, it's not. The only good thing about this album is that the Butthole Surfers guy showed up and sort of half rescued one of the songs. Best track: Jesus Built My Hotrod
Fishbone
3/5
Socially conscious ska funk-rock is better on paper than in practice, at least in this case. Best track: Change
Creedence Clearwater Revival
5/5
The classics are classics for a reason. Best track: Green River
Rush
5/5
The prog rock era of the Holy Triumvirate is my favorite. I don't love the hard rock years, and I don't have a lot of use for the Ayn Rand tribute era that preceded this one. The balance of this album is perfect. A couple of rock solid hits, one of the best instrumentals of all time, and a double song track for the math rock nerds, all in 40 minutes. Incredible. Best track: Limelight
Bill Evans Trio
2/5
Jazz without a horn = music to fall asleep to. I respect the skill, but it's not for me. Best track: Jade Visions
Elliott Smith
2/5
The double-tracked singing still really bugs me. There are a couple of songs where it isn't as anemic, but mostly it makes me involuntarily clench my teeth. He's clearly a very talented musician and songwriter, but I wish some producer would have pulled him aside at some point and insisted he partner up with a good singer. There are a few songs that could have been enjoyable. What a shame. Best track: Son of Sam
Depeche Mode
3/5
There are a couple of songs that don't sound like Depeche Mode songs. Those are the best ones. Best track: Pimpf
Big Star
3/5
Eight different versions of this album have been released. Eight! The book tells me that the 1992 edition is the definitive track listing, and I couldn't find that one in Spotify, so I had to create a list with all of the tracks in the correct order in order to listen. I'm not sure it was worth the trouble. The lyrics read like they were scrawled on a wrinkled piece of paper during lunch right before they were due in 7th period, and the instrumentation doesn't really elevate them enough for me. Chilton's voice is poppy and pleasant, and I suspect this is why this album has developed a following. Best track: O, Dana.
Bruce Springsteen
2/5
I don't buy Bruce as a significant figure in American mythology. It's all so manufactured and engineered to appear authentic. He thinks he's Dylan, but he's not, and I suppose I should applaud the effort, but it's just so damn hard to look past the affected growl and the unbearable saxophones - not to mention the faux-intellectual lyrics. I didn't hate this as much as I thought I would, but I didn't like it, either. He was dad rock when we were kids, so I'm pretty sure that makes him grandpa rock now. Best track: Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
Kraftwerk
3/5
It must have been wild to discover this album in 1978 - a bunch of German weirdos singing in robot voices about space lasers. Still listenable today. Best track: The Model
Parliament
5/5
We want the funk. Give up the funk. Best track: Give Up The Funk (Tear The Roof Off The Sucker)
Joni Mitchell
3/5
A little too experimental. This is my least favorite of Joni Mitchell's albums, but it's not as if there isn't good material. Best track: Sweet Bird
Tom Waits
4/5
This album was recorded over the course of two nights in a studio made up like a jazz club, complete with an invitation-only crowd. Tom Waits works the room, introducing almost every number with a story, then easing into the song, sometimes singing, sometimes merely pontificating while the crowd encourages him. It's a format that might not work for any other artist, but it's perfect for Waits' neo-noir hangdog vagabond persona. There are parts of Tom Waits' discography that I don't completely get, but not this. This works. Best track: Eggs and Sausage (In a Cadillac with Susan Michelson)
Nirvana
3/5
I'm trying to get over my annoyance that this wasn't, in fact, an unplugged performance, and look at the music objectively, but it's hard. At the end of the day, they're still mumbly Nirvana songs, or covers done in the mumbly Nirvana way. This album was treated with kid gloves when it came out because Kurt Cobain had just died, and I don't understand why people still think it's great now. Best track: Dumb
James Taylor
4/5
There's some seriously saccharine stuff here, but when he's on, he's on. Best track: Fire and Rain
The Rolling Stones
5/5
Many people have this as the best Stones album, but to me, it feels incomplete somehow. I think that in 1971, they were trying to answer the question, "Are the Stones more than the sum of their parts?" I'm not sure we need the answer to this question today as much as we did 50 years ago. This may be their most well-rounded album, but I'm not sure it's their best. Best track: Moonlight Mile
Van Morrison
4/5
I don't dislike Van Morrison, but he's always seemed to me to be the product of the English press trying way too hard to make him into an Irish Bob Dylan. The lyrics here are mostly non-sensical, and there's way too much flute, but it's a solid album. I get why it's on this list, but I don't get why it's treated as if it's part of the Pantheon of Great Music. Best track: Cyprus Avenue
David Crosby
5/5
This list of collaborators on this album is wild: multiple members of each of Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, and Santana, plus the entire CSNY crew, and of course Joni Mitchell. Three of the nine songs are instrumentals, one of them (Cowboy Movie) reads like it was written by a mental patient, and the rest offer little in the way of lyrical complexity. It sounds incredible, though, and not only is the sound enough to overcome all of that, it feels like a feature rather than a bug. One of my favorite albums so far. Best track: What Are Their Names
Brian Eno
2/5
expected a solo album from a self-proclaimed "non-musician" producer to perhaps include interesting collaborations and subdued vocals. Mostly, though, it's nonsense sung loudly and poorly over repetitive and uncreative instrumentation. There were three tracks that I (mostly) liked, and two of them had weird tags. On Some Faraway Beach ends abruptly with what sounds like somebody taking a piano lesson, and Some Of Them Are Old fades away into 30 full seconds of wind chimes. Less than the sum of its parts. Best track: Here Come The Warm Jets
Brian Eno
3/5
Mostly ambient pop, some of which is pleasing and some of which is very much not. Very hit and miss. Best track: The Big Ship
Carole King
4/5
The most impressive thing about this album is the consistency. Every track is carefully and creatively crafted, and there's not a single one that stands out in a bad way. Having said that, nothing really sets it apart as an all-time great, either. It's a really, really solid album. Best track: You've Got A Friend
Emmylou Harris
3/5
The tribute to Gram Parsons is worth the price of admission, but otherwise it's kind of a standard country album. Best track: Boulder to Birmingham
The The
4/5
Man, this is some seriously angsty shit. I hope this guy finds what he's looking for. In the meantime, I'm going to recommend that he stay away from drugs. Best track: Uncertain Smile
Moby Grape
4/5
I'd never heard of this band. It was interesting to learn about their brief rise and very long, unfortunate fall. There's a cult following around this band that perpetuates a mythology about how they were screwed badly by their manager, and should be as big as The Beatles, and so on and so forth. There's no doubt they were screwed, but it also feels like maybe there were some self-inflicted wounds along the way. In any case, they put together a great debut album with a killer sound. The fact that all five members contribute to vocals allows them to do some interesting things, especially with the harmonies. There's some nice guitar work in here as well. Best track: Sitting By The Window
Stevie Wonder
4/5
Automatic 4 because of Superstition. The rest is hit or miss. Best track: Superstition
Tom Waits
3/5
Some really good songs, some not so much. Very uneven. So, a typical Tom Waits album. The title song didn't even feature any trombones. Wtf. Best track: Down, Down, Down
Shack
4/5
It would be hard to review this album without comparing Shack to Oasis, so I won't try. It's a band fronted by troubled brothers who sing soaring melodies about scoring heroin accompanied by strings. They're the Liverpudlian Oasis. In fact, the two bands had a sort of co-dependent relationship, even if one made it big while the other one opened for them years later. This certainly sounds like an Oasis album, but better; a glance at the lyrics reveals a song-writing talent that the Gallaghers could only dream of. Shack is one of those "what could have been" bands that nevertheless managed to pull it together long enough to make one memorable album, and this is solid stuff. Best track: Beautiful
Neu!
3/5
David Bowie specifically names this album as an influence on his German era, which is very evident, especially once you know that fact. This is by far the most listenable of any album I've had so far with the label of krautrock. I'm still not sure I want to voluntarily spend time with it. It was fine. Best track: After Eight
Beatles
5/5
This is, no hyperbole, the greatest album of all time. It's the last one the Beatles made all together, and they almost tore each other apart doing so. There are tracks where Lennon doesn't appear, tracks where McCartney doesn't feature as prominently as he would have previously, and tracks where you can almost feel the frustration. In spite of it all, what they put together was incredible and, as always, greater than the sum of its parts. Here Comes the Sun is George Harrison's best work. I Want You (She's So Heavy) is a typical complex contribution from John. Paul took "some crap John wrote in India" and weaved it together with some of his own material to make the masterpiece that is the Abbey Road medley. Ringo...well, Octopus's Garden is pretty good, as far as Ringo's stuff goes. He did finally get a solo, which is nice. The album is so packed that I haven't even mentioned several other greats: Come Together, Something, and Because are all-timers. Best track: the medley
MGMT
5/5
This might be blasphemous, but fuck it - there are shades of David Bowie in here. The hits are here, but the deeper cuts are infinitely listenable. Just an enjoyable album front to back. Best track: Kids
The Cure
2/5
Seventeen seconds is the amount of time I listened before checking out. It's a 35 minute album that feels much, much longer. Aggressively boring. Best track: M
Various Artists
3/5
So. Much. Woodblock. Pretty good for a Christmas album, if a bit uneven. Almost dropped it to a 2 because of the final track. Best track: Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)
Jimi Hendrix
4/5
Hendrix's creative genius is on full display here. Occasionally drifts into "pushing boundaries that don't need to be pushed" territory. Best track: Little Wing
Dire Straits
4/5
A perfect album for a lazy Sunday afternoon. Really solid blues rock. Best track: Wild West End
Simon & Garfunkel
5/5
A stone cold classic. I almost gave a demerit for the horrific live song, but the rest of the album is perfect. Best track: The Only Living Boy in New York
Massive Attack
2/5
The tracks featuring Shara Nelson on vocals were pretty good. The rest...not so much. I might like this if I were into dance music. Best track: Unfinished Sympathy.
Fugazi
3/5
This album is supposed to be angry, but it didn't make me feel anything. Mostly unremarkable. Best track: Brendan 1
Buck Owens
2/5
The importance of this album can't be overstated. Owens and Don Rich (along with Merle, but never mind that) pioneered the honky-tonk sound that influenced generations of country musicians, and nearly every song on this album has been covered many times over. One of the major issues with this album is that in almost every case, the covers are better than the originals. It speaks well of the songwriting that so many people wanted to sing these songs, but I can't help but think that an album with the best version of each song would be exponentially better. The other issue is that the audio production is downright awful. Much of the singing is distorted and occasionally gets drowned in the mix. The panning is all over the place, to the point of being distracting. I know they were still getting used to mixing boards in the 50s, but I don't think we should be grading this on a curve. Best track: Streets of Laredo
Hugh Masekela
3/5
There were parts I really dug (mostly the trumpet) and parts I really didn't (mostly the alto sax). Some good grooves here. Best track: Maseru
Mercury Rev
4/5
This band flopped commercially and decided to make one album for themselves before breaking up, and this was the result. It grabbed my attention and didn't let go. There's a bit too much of the musical saw, and the singing is a bit weak, but they don't lack for heart, and it shines through. Not what I expected when I spun it up. Best track: Holes
Steely Dan
4/5
I've never really listened to Steely Dan outside of their hits, and it looks like I need to take another look. There's not a weak spot on this album. Best track: Do It Again
Green Day
5/5
This was the first "Parental Advisory - Explicit Lyrics" album I was able to get away with owning. I haven't listened to this one (or anything by Green Day, really) in years, and I was afraid it wouldn't hold up. I needn't have worried. Best track: Basket Case
Death In Vegas
2/5
I'm not into the type of electronica that takes a measure or two and repeats it 256 times in a row. That's not what this whole album was, but it was enough of it to really beat me down. There's some decent stuff buried here. I'm not sure it's worth the effort to dig out. Best track: Aladdin's Story
Mott The Hoople
4/5
All I knew about this band before today was that David Bowie liked them enough to write them a song so they wouldn't break up, and it became their most successful single. So, I was unprepared for how well-rounded this album was. It's actually really good; however, I listened to the version of the song with Bowie singing, and I wish he would have just kept it for himself. Best track: All the Young Dudes
Echo And The Bunnymen
4/5
Echo and the Bunnymen have achieved a rare feat here, combining thoughtful lyrics with interesting melodies, backed by a 35-piece orchestra. Unfortunately, I had a hard time feeling much of anything while listening to the album, mostly because the lead singer is horribly bland and generic. Best track: Seven Seas
Elis Regina
3/5
She's clearly a very talented singer with incredible artistic range. This didn't grab me, and that's as much about the music as it is the fact that it's a foreign language album. Best track: Tiro Ao Álvaro
Pentangle
4/5
There were moments in the beginning, mostly when the glockenspiel and sitar featured prominently, when I couldn't decide whether I loved or hated this album. Ultimately, it won me over. The harmonies are tight and the guitar parts are impressive. It's a solid English folk album. Best track: Hunting Song
Common
5/5
Common and Ye in their primes. It doesn't get much better than this.
John Martyn
2/5
Super inconsistent from one song to the next. Some really nice guitar work, but not usually enough to elevate a boring tune. This guy sounds like he doesn't move his jaw when he sings. Best track: Over the Hill
Judas Priest
5/5
🤘 🤘 🤘 🤘 🤘. Best track: Breaking the Law
2/5
Most of it was generic punk. A few standout tracks, but not enough to make me want to listen again. Best track: It's Who You Know
Wilco
5/5
Transcendent. This album was originally scheduled to release on 9/11, yet it somehow captures the post-9/11 ethos perfectly. It's also fresh today. Complex in all the right ways, without sacrificing listenability or accessibility. It's cliche for hipsters to fawn over this album, but in this case, they're right. Best track: I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
Love
4/5
Some really interesting arrangements here. Many of the lyrics were thoughtful and meaningful, but there are some serious duds in here as well. Overall, I really liked it, but (I'm sorry for this) I didn't Love it. Best track: You Set the Scene
Q-Tip
3/5
I love Q-Tip in ATCQ, and some of his features are among my favorites. It's hard to stick with his lazy delivery for an entire album, though. Could have used more appearances by the Norah Joneses of the world. Best track: Won't Trade
Def Leppard
4/5
If I had the power to delete one song from the world's consciousness and ensure it had never been made, Pour Some Sugar On Me would be on the shortlist. So, I entered this one with some trepidation. There are certainly some songs where you have to turn your brain off in order to enjoy it; "Don't Shoot Shot Gun" is an easy target, but see also Armageddon It. The lyrics are so inane they almost ruin an incredible sounding song. That's the thing, though - outside of the sugar song, it sounds amazing. A great album for background listening. I'm glad that this project forced me to take another look at this one. Best track: Gods of War
Paul Simon
3/5
I knew a bit about the making of this album, but not the whole story, which was really interesting. Unfortunately, reading the story was a better experience than listening to the album. It's very 80s, with fadeouts on nearly every song. And the percussion - for a genre that's supposed to be built on the bass line and not the drum set, why is it so damn forward in the mix? For a collaboration it featured a bit too much Paul Simon, which feels weird to say, but nevertheless I think it's true. Points for creativity and for introducing the world to a different kind of music. Best track: You Can Call Me Al
The Stranglers
1/5
Women are objects and Jews are not people in the world of The Stranglers. I still have some reflection to do about why I'm okay with excusing this type of bigotry in other artists, but for now, I'll say that this shit put me in a bad mood today. Being a dick doesn't make you punk. Best track: Goodbye Toulouse
Steely Dan
4/5
I wasn't sure what I thought about this one, but I read that they focused on incorporating some jazz into their sound, so I listened again, and it was clear as day. Kind of weird how articulating a genre or influence of a genre can lock everything into place. Not as single-friendly as Can't Buy A Thrill, but still just as enjoyable. Best track: King of the World
Happy Mondays
3/5
TIL about Madchester, a genre that blends British alt-rock and dance music. It's about as gross as it sounds. I was pretty disappointed in this album until the last song, which I absolutely loved. Best track: Harmony
Bob Dylan
5/5
The man won a Nobel Prize for Literature, and this album is the reason. It's an accomplishment of a lifetime, even before the lyrics are set to music. I don't think I have the words for this one. It's great. It's great. Best track: Visions of Johanna
Billy Joel
4/5
Billy Joel's biggest hits are elsewhere, but his best songs are here. This is him at his purest, I guess. Best track: Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)
Queen
5/5
I was blown away by the scope of this album. It's probably best known for its two epics, but that summary ignores the depth and breadth of the rest of its offerings. What other rock project contains a hate song for a former manager, a Bowie-esque space folk song, and a combination Dixieland/ukulele number? All of the experiments work. I have a tendency to reduce Bohemian Rhapsody to a product of Wayne's World fame, and I'm definitely guilty of taking it for granted due to its overexposure. A fresh listen reaffirms its status as a masterpiece, and the thing of it is, it's not out of place on the album. The whole thing is a work of art. Best track: Bohemian Rhapsody
Dire Straits
3/5
I don't get it. I read a lot of reviews, trying to understand it, and the consensus seems to be that this is their best album. For me, it's a million miles away from their self-titled album, and they moved in the wrong direction. Best track: So Far Away
3/5
This is the kind of album where if you like it, you say that the artist displayed her range, whereas if you don't, you say that it's inconsistent. I fall into the latter camp. Some of the songs were pretty good, though I hesitate to call any of them great, and many of them fell flat. I don't really like her affected growl, and there's something about some of the backing instrumentation that didn't age well, but I can't put my finger on what it is. Best track: This is Love
808 State
1/5
I listened to this album for 39 minutes and now I'm clinically insane. I worry for the people who seek this out voluntarily. Best track: Magical Dream
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
3/5
I really like Karen O, but I kinda feel like she's a bit wasted in the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. This album has some bright spots, but overall, it's just okay. Best track: Maps
DJ Shadow
2/5
The first album made entirely of samples. I like it when an artist uses samples effectively and then elevates the material. There's no elevation here. Everything is mixed nicely enough, but after listening to this for over an hour, I'm not sure why I'm supposed to give it any more attention. Best track: Midnight In A Perfect World
The Roots
5/5
I heard this album in my RA's room not long after it came out, and at the time I didn't really know much about The Roots. It blew my mind then, and it blew my mind again today. Black Thought is the best lyricist in the game imo. Best track: Thought @ Work
Thin Lizzy
1/5
A double live album that's pulled from several different shows and later overdubbed is bound to be rather unenjoyable, and that's before considering that it's mediocre 70s rock. I have no idea how this made anybody's list of essential albums. Completely disposable. Best track: Massacre
Arctic Monkeys
4/5
A really fun post-punk album. I find it a bit strange that this album is on the list, but not the superior AM. Best track: When The Sun Goes Down
The Doors
4/5
It's impossible to listen to this album and not feel like the coolest person around. Best track: Riders on the Storm
Violent Femmes
3/5
Fun record that sounds like it was mostly written by somebody in high school (because it was). Skip to any given section of any given song, and it sounds really similar to the last thing you were listening to, just with more or less xylophone. Best track: Blister in the Sun
The Notorious B.I.G.
4/5
I really wanted to give the GOAT a 5, but the skits on this album are out of control, in a bad way. This is definitely one where you put several tracks in a playlist and never touch the rest of it again. Best track: The What
My Bloody Valentine
4/5
This is the brand of shoegaze that I don't super love. It's pleasant enough, but the fuzzy lyrics and lack of focus on melody really bring it down for me. I'm not sure I completely understand the universal acclaim this band/record gets. Best track: Soon
OutKast
5/5
Maybe my favorite hip hop album of all time. So innovative and ahead of its time. Bangers on bangers. Best track: B.O.B
Dusty Springfield
2/5
An album full of covers, most of which don't improve on the original and/or were covered better by others. Best track: Don't You Know
Willie Nelson
4/5
When Willie covers a song, he makes it his. Best track: Moonlight in Vermont
The Who
3/5
One of the things I've really enjoyed about this project is finding lesser known songs from artists I already know. When it comes to The Who, though, most of their deeper album cuts do nothing for me. There are some okay ones here, but the hit-to-miss ratio is way too low. Best track: My Generation
The White Stripes
5/5
Compelling from start to finish. A couple of annoyances that I could nitpick, but it's a great album. Best track: Seven Nation Army
Kate Bush
2/5
Weird and borderline unlistenable, but at least some of the lyrics are thoughtful. Best track: Houdini
David Bowie
4/5
One day at David Bowie's house, Iggy Pop took a bunch of drugs and hallucinated that his girlfriend was being eaten by a TV, so naturally, Bowie turned it into a song. He was so coked out while making this album that he says he only has one memory of asking for a certain guitar riff, and nothing else. I think the lesson here is, if you're going to do drugs, you should either be as talented as David Bowie or have a friend with that level of talent that can turn your experience into a trippy song. Best track: TVC 15
Tom Waits
4/5
There has never been a more apt album title. The music is indeed stripped down to its bones. Tom sings his existential angst over percussion that sounds like it's just Tom Waits banging on shit with whatever he can find (because it is). It's all so very Tom Waits, and so very 90s (check out that album cover, complete with font that looks like a cross between the espn2 logo and anything produced by Tim Burton), and it works. Best track: That Feel
Marianne Faithfull
3/5
I could take or leave the vocals, but I'd listen to an album of just the band grooving. Some fun, if somewhat forgettable songs here. Best track: The Ballad of Lucy Jordan
Shuggie Otis
4/5
Funky. A couple of forgettable tracks, but really pleasant overall. Best track: Sparkle City
Korn
1/5
An interminably long album featuring lots of growling, vocal-fry singing, whispering, gibberish, and bagpipes. It's not just that the music sucks. The lyrics are inane, and I feel like I'm being generous with that description. A low point is "All in the Family," where Jonathan Davis and Fred Durst trade stupid insults that are variations on "You're a fag lol" for five very long minutes. I had successfully scrubbed this song from my brain, but here it is again, tormenting me. I don't hate this album as much as I fear having to hear it again. That may not be true; I do hate it as well. Best track: Freak on a Leash
Prince
3/5
Really impressive opening set of tracks. Unfortunately, the rest of it can't quite keep up. Best track: Little Red Corvette
Yes
3/5
I struggle with the albums where there's clearly a ton of skill involved, and I'm legitimately very impressed, but none of the music is something I would ever choose to listen to, especially a second time. I guess I'll just plop down a 3 and move on. Best track: Mood for a Day
System Of A Down
5/5
I don't think I've listened to this since high school, and I was afraid it wouldn't hold up, but it absolutely did. I put the entire album on my 1001 Albums playlist. Best song: Sugar
Missy Elliott
4/5
There are a few swings and misses here, but also a whole lot to like. Every collaboration works. It's criminal how underrated she is. Best track: Gossip Folks
Emerson, Lake & Palmer
3/5
Started off with a well-known classical piece played nicely on a pipe organ, and I thought to myself, "Maybe this one doesn't have any of the masturbatory prog rock bullshit, and that's why it's on the list." How foolish and naïve. There's a ton of musicianship here, and it's all very impressive, but I'm baffled by the person who plunks down $72 or whatever to go watch a guy play the Moog for what seems like hours. Best track: Promenade (the first one)
Bob Dylan
5/5
This album sounds like Dylan's "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech, and in fact, he almost died after releasing it. Thankfully, he's still around, but that does nothing to diminish the album's dark look at mortality. It's brutally honest, like any Dylan record, but this one feels moreso. Best track: Not Dark Yet
Gary Numan
3/5
I thought I would hate this. It's not terrible. Best track: Cars
Killing Joke
4/5
Listened to it twice and never understood a single word (to be fair, some of it was in German). Some really sick grooves, though. Best track: S.O.36
Barry Adamson
2/5
It's a demo reel for a guy who wanted to make movie soundtracks. My best theory for why this is on the list is that it's the closest they could get to breaking their own rule about not including soundtracks. Best track: The Swinging Detective
Pulp
4/5
It's pretty good Britpop, so of course if you read any English reviewer, they're the second coming. Their most prominent single, Common People, is pretty badass, but the rest of it is mostly just horny generic pop. Best track: Common People
Coldplay
3/5
Of course it's ridiculous to compare this band to the best in history, but that doesn't mean they're bad. This is a perfectly competent debut album. Best track: Yellow
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
4/5
A double album that could (should?) have been a single album. I really enjoyed the songs with the backing choir. Best track: There She Goes, My Beautiful World
AC/DC
4/5
Not my favorite of theirs, but it still rocks. Best track: Highway to Hell
The Divine Comedy
4/5
Exactly what it says on the tin. I'm a sucker for orchestral arrangements. Best track: Everybody Knows (Except You)
The Velvet Underground
2/5
I respect The Velvet Underground and like a lot of their stuff, but there are parts of this one where they lose me. Mostly it's the parts with the electric viola (wtf), and unfortunately, that overshadows what would otherwise be some really solid stuff. The album that has Sweet Jane on it should have been on this list instead. Best track: All Tomorrow's Parties
Pearl Jam
4/5
There's no denying the massive size and scope of this album. A definite high point for the band. Best track: Even Flow
Public Enemy
3/5
It's a Flava Flav heavy album, which makes it lesser Public Enemy for me. Best track: By the Time I Get to Arizona
Culture Club
2/5
Corny as hell. Best track: Miss Me Blind
Orange Juice
3/5
Scottish New Wave Funk from the 80s is an unholy combination on paper, so I was surprised to find several tracks on this album that were not just listenable, but enjoyable. I never would have picked this album up in a million years. Best track: Louise Louise
Fleetwood Mac
5/5
The album is obviously full of hits - even the deeper cuts feel like they would be a lead single for a different band - but what sets it apart is that you feel like you're on the front row for a beautifully intimate slow-motion car crash. Nearly every member of the band was involved in some kind of break-up while recording (some of the separations were with each other), and they each handled it in Their Own Way, making for a diverse and yet unified look at heartbreak. Best track: Go Your Own Way
Todd Rundgren
5/5
Sounds like an album that was written in some dude's bedroom while he was on psychedelics. There are plenty of "Mr. Kite's Glass Walrus" moments (and a John Lennon diss track, apparently), but it also manages the trick of staying down to earth without being particularly dense or impenetrable. Rundgren didn't release any singles because he wanted people to listen to the whole album straight through, which is typically an eyeroll worthy statement, but in this case, I think it's a cohesive enough unit that a straight listen is probably the best route to take. This thing got better as it went. A great listening experience. Best track: Just One Victory
Sonic Youth
3/5
This was Sonic Youth's jump to a major label, and the contemporary reviews I read praised the album for its authenticity, which I take to mean that they didn't sell out by getting rid of the bullshit. I can confirm that there is still plenty of bullshit to wade through. Best track: Kool Thing
The Dictators
2/5
This album is like the grandfather of punk rock. It certainly sounds punk: adolescent humor, repeated shouts of "Let's go!", and tracks that were clearly recorded in one take. Some of it is really fun, but there's a lot of dumb here, and that's hard to overlook. Best track: Two Tub Man
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
3/5
Two massive hits and a whole lot of what feels like incomplete demos. A pretty good debut. Best track: American Girl
David Gray
3/5
I didn't really get it, and after awhile, I decided I didn't care enough to keep trying to get it. It's a guy pouring his heart out into some pedestrian, mediocre songs. At least the effort's there. Best track: This Year's Love
The White Stripes
4/5
I'm not sure this album needed 16 songs, even at only 40 minutes. Still a hell of a ride, though. Best track: We're Going to Be Friends
Van Halen
4/5
The album where they added synthesizers. The rest, as they say, is history. Best track: Panama
Basement Jaxx
2/5
In a Rolling Stone interview, one of the members of Basement Jaxx bemoaned the state of dance music, using words like "robotic," "shiny," and "superficial" (among others). I would use all of those words to describe this horribly generic dance album, so I would say that they failed in their quest to transform the genre. They also failed to make house music interesting. Hard pass. Best track: U Can't Stop Me
Beck
4/5
Beck traded in his two turntables and a microphone for an acoustic guitar and an atmospheric sound, and it works. Melancholy was in in 2002, and this is among the best that era has to offer. Best track: Round the Bend
Dirty Projectors
3/5
A great deal of this record is a guy singing in falsetto while two female voices do a weird "vocal hocketing" thing that I learned about today. Dirty Projectors is one of those art pop bands that think switching obscure time signatures in the middle of a song makes them worthy. Technical acumen is nice, but they occassionally forget to make the music listenable at the same time. Best track: Two Doves
Justice
3/5
It's Daft Punk, but compressed and distorted to hell. Grading on a curve and giving a 3 because it's a dance album that only made me want to play in traffic like four times. Best track: D.A.N.C.E.
Les Rythmes Digitales
2/5
The book says that this album is "[f]aux French electronica at its best," which leads me to several questions. Why does faux French electronica exist, and why are we keeping tabs on it? Is this really the exemplar of the genre, and if so, what does bad faux French electronica sound like? Who is the target audience for this? If life is truly meaningless, and the human condition is to ascribe meaning to it, why is the conclusion "Eat, drink, and be merry" also something that an animal can do with no self-reflection? Are animals simply beings who have achieved enlightenment? If nihilism is constructed on paradoxes, is it any less true? What compels an artist to take a decent-sounding track and add a bunch of nonsensical sound effects on top of it? Best track: Damaged People
Morrissey
2/5
Rejected alternate titles: (1) "Morrissey's Pseudo-Intellectual Musings About the State of the World, Delivered with the Subtlety and Nuance of a Monkey Operating a Chainsaw," (2) "In Which Morrissey Paradoxically Accuses Other People of Being Boring," (3) "Morrisey Finds a Way to Whine About His Press Clippings on What Feels Like Every Song," (4) "We give up, Morrissey - just put something that sounds like you're simultaneously threatening and seducing the consumer, and we'll Photoshop a Tommy Gun into your hand later. Signed, The Producers." Best track: First of the Gang to Die
Dennis Wilson
5/5
Successfully walks the fine line of acknowledging the influences of the Beach Boys while claiming his own style. Expertly crafted, and a joy to listen to. Best track: River Song
Milton Nascimento
5/5
I didn't envision giving full marks to a foreign language album, but my appreciation for this grew as I listened. He has the voice of an angel and switches genres competently and with ease. The lyrics I looked up were meaningful. One of the songs was banned in Brazil for being too revolutionary; when you listen to it, it sounds like a happy-go-lucky flower power tune. The contrast is super interesting to me. Best track: Paisagem da Janela
Rod Stewart
3/5
It's a music theory exercise solved in an uninteresting way. You can see flashes of cleverness in the way he covers songs, but once you get past the novelty, who cares? Best track: Only A Hobo
Elvis Presley
3/5
Elvis doesn't play a character on this album, which means it's probably his best one. Best track: Fever
The Beach Boys
5/5
One of the most praised albums of all time. The Beach Boys have never been and never will be my favorite, but this is a great album, end of story. Best track: God Only Knows
Tracy Chapman
3/5
Several of the songs fell flat for me. Best track: Fast Car
Neil Young
4/5
An ambitious project with some killer collaborations. Best track: Heart of Gold
Isaac Hayes
5/5
Can you dig it? Best track: Theme from Shaft
Franz Ferdinand
4/5
Really fun, really smart. Best track: Take Me Out
Jeru The Damaja
3/5
An underground classic that got lost in the mainstream due to its proximity to other major releases, notably Illmatic. A lot of it didn't age particularly well, but there's some cleverness in the beats (Come Clean) and the lyrics (You Can't Stop the Prophet, among others) that still stands up. Best track: You Can't Stop the Prophet
Dizzee Rascal
4/5
An East London rapper named Dizzee Rascal sounds exactly how you might imagine. Once you get past the novelty of the accent (TIL that a Cockney accent with Jamaican and West African influences is called Jafaican) and the slang (not the "road toad frog" kind, the "call your friends 'blood'" kind), it's actually really fun and really clever. Gangsta rap is an American export, no doubt, but Rascal has fully absorbed it and turned it into an expression of life in East London. Super fascinating stuff. Best track: Hold Ya Mouf
The Smashing Pumpkins
5/5
I loved this band back in the day, and for some reason fell out with them until I went back a few years ago. I know a lot of people don't like Corgan, and there's good reason for that, but this album rocks. Best track: Today
Duran Duran
2/5
Nah. Best track: The Chauffeur
Fleetwood Mac
2/5
Tusk is Fleetwood Mac's White Album (a disparate collection of individually created songs) and their Smiley Smile (in which they overthink the runaway success of their band-defining album and go too far in the opposite direction). Joyless and disappointing at times. Best track: Storms
Jurassic 5
4/5
Does anybody know if Jurassic 5 is trying to bring old school rap back? They never mention it. This is a fun album with good production. The best track features Big Daddy Kane, and it kinda made me wish I was listening to one of his albums instead. Best track: A Day at the Races
Travis
3/5
One of those pop/post-pop albums that's pleasant enough to listen to, but ten minutes later, you can't really recall anything about it or what it sounds like. A bit generic for this list. Best track: Why Does It Always Rain On Me?
Prince
4/5
Prince's well-known singles are good and all, but this is the stuff. A massive album in every way. Best track: It's Gonna Be A Beautiful Night
Elvis Presley
2/5
The best parts of this album are the instrumental breaks. Best track: I'm Movin' On
Deerhunter
3/5
This is one of those shoegaze bands that occasionally forgets to put a melody or intelligible lyric into their music. They come up as a suggested band based on other bands and genres that I'm into, but they've never been more than just okay in my eyes. Best track: He Would Have Laughed
Mudhoney
3/5
They get labeled as grunge because they're a Seattle band using heavy distortion in 1991, but there are more punk elements here than anything: an abundance of two-minute songs, shouty repetitive choruses, a lead singer who can't carry a tune, and purposefully mediocre production quality (because using low quality tape totally owned those studios, man). I vacillated between being impressed by the balls on these guys and annoyed by this album's existence, which was probably the point. Best track: Good Enough
Hawkwind
4/5
I'm a sucker for media about space and how it makes us think about our place in the universe, so this album works for me, despite the layers and layers of pompousness and corniness (and spoken word bullshit). If Space Oddity and Rocket Man are about astronomy, then Space Ritual is about astrology or maybe astral projection. I have a lot of room in my heart for psychedelic space rock, so while I acknowledge this isn't for everybody, I dug it. Best track: Brainstorm
Iron Butterfly
2/5
The drum solo is nice, I guess. I get why people are into it. The rest is entirely forgettable. Best track: In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida
Beatles
4/5
They'd already announced themselves to the world before this album came out, but it's their first (and only) album to be comprised entirely of Lennon-McCarthy compositions. John contributed more songs, but for my money, Paul's are better. And I Love Her is the standout on the record, and Things We Said Today is maybe their most underrated early offering. Best track: And I Love Her
Dr. John
3/5
Weird swamp rock. It was fun, but I was glad the album wasn't any longer than 33 minutes. Best track: I Walk on Guilded Splinters
Faith No More
2/5
I kind of hate this album, but I try not to give a 1 unless there are no redeeming qualities that I can see, and I have to admit that the last track was kind of cool, so I'm giving it a really soft 2. Really, though, this sucks. Best track: Woodpecker from Mars
Fela Kuti
5/5
This guy used his craft to stick it to the man and paid the ultimate price for it, then got back up and did it again. An incredible story. The songs are bangers, too. Best track: Zombie
Mj Cole
1/5
Boring, repetitive, and super long. Possesses about as much cultural importance as a cologne ad, which makes the album cover convenient. Best track: Radio Interlude
Sleater-Kinney
3/5
This album would have benefited from having a different lead vocalist, but it's not bad. Maybe more misses than hits, but the hits are solid. Best track: Heart Factory
Santana
5/5
One of the greats. Best track: Black Magic Woman / Gypsy Queen
Aretha Franklin
4/5
So much soul. Best track: Groovin'
Sonic Youth
4/5
Sonic Youth read some William Gibson novels, dropped some acid, and made a noisy, distortion-heavy, socially conscious album. It sounds exactly like you might expect. An album you have to listen to more than once, or you'll miss a ton. Best track: Candle
Sade
3/5
Boring adult contemporary music. Better than I thought it was going to be, but I'm writing this 10 minutes after I finished listening, and I remember almost nothing about it. Best track: Why Can't We Live Together
A Tribe Called Quest
5/5
Classic cerebral rap. Best track: Scenario
The Byrds
4/5
Psychedelic folk rock that mostly works. Best track: Draft Morning.
LL Cool J
3/5
The album is too long, and a lot of the material either didn't age well ("I sure wouldn't rape you" as a pickup line? Yikes) or is super corny (Milky Cereal, among others). There is no denying the power of the title track, though. Best track: Mama Said Knock You Out
Madonna
4/5
The album where Madonna remade herself and brought EDM to the mainstream. Solid stuff. Best track: The Power of Good-Bye
R.E.M.
5/5
For an embarrassingly long time, I thought I didn't like R.E.M. because Losing My Religion sucks. I was right about that song, but I've seen the error of my ways when it comes to the band. This album was a huge part of that. There's something to like about nearly every track. It's just a bunch of thoughtful, well executed jams. Best track: Man on the Moon
The Slits
2/5
I read several positive reviews for this album because I was trying to understand it. Nearly all of them mentioned its influence and apologized for the sub-par musicianship. I'm sure they inspired a lot of people, but if the music isn't good, I'm not sure I need to hear it before I die. I can't imagine getting hit by a bus and my last thought being, "But I never got to that album from The Slits!" Best track: Adventures Close To Home
Erykah Badu
2/5
I can't tell if she's not moving her jaw or her lips or her tongue or what, but Badu has a lazy way of singing that is a huge turn-off. I realized partway through that I'd much rather be listening to the instrumentals, which is usually a bad sign. Best track: Bag Lady
Stevie Wonder
5/5
After we'd lived in our current house for about 6 or 7 years, I found a taqueria 4 miles away that blew my mind. The burritos, the sauce - incredible. My first time eating it, it was so good that I wanted to punch everybody that lived around me in the face for not telling me about this hidden gem. I wasted the better part of a decade not knowing that the best green sauce I've ever had was right around the corner. There's really no excuse for not finding it myself, but why didn't you tell me about it, you jerks? That taqueria is this album. Best track: Sir Duke
Billy Bragg
4/5
Bragg and Wilco put some old Woody Guthrie lyrics to music, and it mostly works. They stayed true to his aesthetic while making it their own, which is how you have to approach a project like this, I think. The issue I keep coming back to is that for all three major players, this isn't their best work. It's really good, but it doesn't particularly stand out. Best track: Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key
The Beach Boys
2/5
The worst of the Beach Boys, if we're being honest. Best track: She Knows Me Too Well
Spiritualized
5/5
This album featured 58 collaborators and took 18 months to put together. The final track is 17 minutes long. There's a gospel choir, a string ensemble, and Dr. John. It's a monument to excess, but at the same time, it's about simple truths. I can see how it might be portentous to some, but I think it works. It's smart and emotional at the same time, and it sounds incredible. Best track: Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space
Frank Zappa
4/5
Some incredible jams. Just Frank Zappa doing Frank Zappa things. Best track: Willie the Pimp
David Bowie
5/5
The second of the Berlin trilogy, and like Low before it, it has a vocal side and a mostly instrumental side. The instrumentals are Eno collaborations, but they're Bowie through and through. The Kraftwerk influence is overstated, in my opinion. I believe it's more accurate to say that Bowie accomplished what they couldn't, or maybe more politely: they walked so he could run. Best track: Heroes
Emerson, Lake & Palmer
3/5
The centerpiece of this album is a 20-minute prog rock anthem/suite about an armadillo fighting a manticore. Civilization might have been a mistake. Best track: The Only Way (Hymn)
Daft Punk
1/5
After years of trying to understand Daft Punk, I decided today that I just don't get it. The "repeat the same measure 64 times while a single note drones in the background, then repeat with a slight variation" genre needs to die. Best track: Funk Ad
Badly Drawn Boy
3/5
He's like an Elliott Smith who can sing, which is nice, but there's not a lot here that grabs the attention in a positive way. Just okay. Best track: The Shining
The Beach Boys
4/5
A tale of two sides. They stuck the experiments that didn't work on Side 1 and the ones that did on Side 2. It's almost as if you can hear them maturing as the album goes on. I doubt that was the intent, but it's my headcanon. Best track: Feel Flows
Bob Dylan
5/5
I'm inclined to give Dylan a 5 just based on the fact that his name is on the album, and I acknowledge this bias. The thing is, nothing he does here disabuses me of the notion that he's a genius. Every track oozes with meaningful allusion and evocative imagery. I keep looking for a reasons to give a demerit, and I'm coming up empty. Best track: Mr. Tambourine Man
Steely Dan
3/5
This album didn't grab me like their other ones. Best track: Pretzel Logic
George Michael
4/5
I took your advice, George Michael, and you know what? This shit slaps. Best track: Freedom! '90
Red Hot Chili Peppers
3/5
I soured on RHCP awhile back for no real reason, and upon revisiting this album, I feel like I was both right and wrong. The hits are still solid, but most of the deeper cuts leave a lot to be desired. It's really hard to listen to Anthony Kiedis slur his words for an hour. Best track: Easily
Led Zeppelin
5/5
A massive album. Best debut of all time? Best track: Dazed and Confused
2Pac
4/5
The ballads get a lot of attention, and for good reason, but for me the angry braggadocio is where Tupac shines. Best track: Death Around The Corner
Queen
3/5
A bit uneven. Some Killer and some filler. A thirteen track album shouldn't have three sub-2 minute tracks. Best track: Killer Queen
Elvis Costello
2/5
Everything about Elvis Costello, from the name to the glasses to the sneer in his voice to the nonsensical pop culture references, is aped from another artist in a cynical attempt to separate Boomers from their nostalgia dollars. He's Springsteen for people who bristle at the thought of even pretending that they're working class. That may not be fair to him, but he was just unfair to my ears for an hour, so we can call it even. This album feels like it was specifically engineered to be bland and unremarkable, and contemporary reviews were middling. Why is it on the list? Best track: Kinder Murder
Marty Robbins
4/5
Classic storytelling songs done right. Listening to some of these songs brought me back to the crappy barbecue restaurant we used to go to that had this album on the jukebox. Best track: El Paso
The Fall
1/5
There is zero chance that I'll remember anything about this album once I've listened to everything on this list. It's a guy mumbling over some generic early 90s post-punk. A waste of time. Best track: Glam-Racket
Sigur Rós
5/5
One problem that a lot of atmospheric albums have is a lack of discernible melody, which is not a problem here. They've successfully created soaring music that still qualifies as music, which is nice. I feel like I need more than one day to properly digest all of it, which is usually a very good sign. Here's a fun game to play if you only speak English, like I do: Try to figure out (without cheating) which songs are sung in Icelandic and which are sung in their made-up gibberish language. Best track: Olsen Olsen
Paul Simon
2/5
In which one half of the duo that gave us The Boxer and The Only Living Boy in New York released a lead single about allergies, and it wasn't even the worst song on the album. Did you know that cars are cars all over the world? An awful album only partially redeemed by an introspective reflection on the assassination of John Lennon. Best track: The Late Great Johnny Ace
Beth Orton
4/5
It might not be fair to Beth to say that she sounds exactly like Natalie Merchant, but...she does. There are plenty of great tracks on this record, and the standout is a song where she grieves her dead mother. Powerful stuff. Best track: Pass In Time
Slayer
2/5
I don't really know what to do with this album. I'm going to try to split the difference, which is probably the wrong thing to do. Musically, this owns. However, there's a Nazi problem. The opening track is named after and makes explicit references to Josef Mengele, who experimented on prisoners at Auschwitz. If you read or listen to the lyrics, they stop short of glorifying him; in fact, it's kind of just their usual shtick with the inspiration coming from a different source. In an interview, Jeff Hanneman basically said, "We didn't say he was bad because it's self-evident." It's clear they're following the same playbook that was so successful for them when it came to Satanic Panic: Create the controversy, fan the flames of it by issuing some non-denial denials, and earn street cred with the rebellious teenagers that make up the core of their fanbase. Are they literal Nazis? Maybe not. Probably not. But they sure didn't have any problems using Nazi imagery on multiple occasions to move records and merchandise, so they can fuck right off. Best track: Raining Blood
Janet Jackson
3/5
I know she's supposed to be the proto-Beyonce or whatever, but...meh. Best track: Miss You Much
Soft Cell
2/5
Like a cabaret, it's flashy, flamboyant, and devoid of substance. There's a song called Sex Dwarf, and it's exactly what it says on the tin. I had to know that, and now you have to know it, too. Best track: Say Hello, Wave Goodbye
Jean-Michel Jarre
3/5
It's electronica with a melody, which is a minor miracle. I almost gave it a higher score because it exceeded my expectations by not completely sucking. You can tell it's from the 70s because of the lasers and other space noises. Best track: Oxygène IV
Bobby Womack
3/5
Funky soul. Best track: If You Think You're Lonely Now
Tim Buckley
3/5
Gets a bit weird at times, but enjoyable. Hit to miss ratio is not the best. Best track: Make It Right
The The
3/5
The guy's clearly got some things to say, and I support him, but he chose to express himself using 80s post-punk, so my support only goes so far
Otis Redding
5/5
Listening to this album feels like participating in music history. Great covers. Great originals that would go on to be covered (Respect). Funky, soulful, uplifting. What else can be said? Best track: Down in the Valley
Neil Young
5/5
Following the commercial success of his most accessible album (Harvest), Neil Young stated that he felt like he was in the "middle of the road" and wanted to head toward "the ditch." This album is his first step in that direction, and it's a good one. There are some really clever musical moves (listen to Revolution Blues and On the Beach back to back for an example) and some very dark, instrospective lyrics. This album doesn't contain any of my favorite NY tracks, but it might be my favorite of his anyway. Best track: Walk On
Booker T. & The MG's
4/5
The definitive Hammond organ album. Great jams. Best track: Green Onions
Crowded House
3/5
About halfway through the album, somebody starts shouting during the outro to a song. It got my attention, because it was the first time anybody in the band showed any emotion. I'm probably being too cynical, but it sure feels like Crowded House worked their way joylessly through a checklist. Scathing indictment of American culture? Check. Multiple instrumental solos that are just long enough to display some talent? Check. Children's choir singing backing vocals? You betcha. The one thing they forgot to pack? A bit of passion. It shouldn't feel like a chore to listen to a 48-minute pop rock album, but here we are. Best track: Fall at Your Feet
Nirvana
4/5
I'm not the biggest Nirvana guy, but after listening to this album in the context of this project, I understand a bit better why people are really into them. I still wouldn't voluntarily listen to most of these tracks, but there's no denying the massive footprint of this work. Best track: Breed
Chicago
4/5
I love Chicago when they're at their best. They're not always at their best here, but the foundation is there. I wish somebody would have been around to tell them to cut the bullshit (looking at you, Free Form Guitar). Best track: Listen
Kate Bush
1/5
I don't find her shake-voice compelling or pleasant to listen to. She should have been a poet. Best track: This Woman's Work
U2 gets a lot of deserved shit for their high-profile misses, but I'm kind of done apologizing for loving them. This album is a banger and it's like their third or fourth best one. Best track: Beautiful Day
David Bowie
5/5
A haunting vision of mortality. This is one of those albums that gets better and better with repeated listens. Best track: I Can't Give Everything Away
Barry Adamson
3/5
There were parts of this that I really, really hated, but some of it was actually solid. A very up-and-down album. Somebody should have gotten ahold of this guy and told him to cool it with the spoken word. Best track: Something Wicked This Way Comes
The Mothers Of Invention
2/5
I suppose you could generously call this satire, but it's really more "Rage against the normies," with penguin of d00m levels or randomness to prove how aloof and freaky they are. The more they criticize the folks who care about appearances, the more they reveal that they do, too. Best track: Hungry Freaks, Daddy
Billie Holiday
3/5
I can't claim to be a connoisseur of Billie Holiday music, but this album sounded different than what I was expecting. Turns out it's because they recorded this after her voice broke down. It's rougher and more seasoned than how she sounds on her more famous works. I wish the producer would have thrown some more varied songs at her. It sounds like 12 variations on a theme, which is probably what they were going for, but not necessarily the most interesting choice they could have made. Best track: But Beautiful
Nine Inch Nails
4/5
I learned a lot of things about this album today: that it was recorded in the Sharon Tate house, that it's more than Hurt and the "fuck you like an animal" song, and that you can hear shades of Reznor's future film soundtrack work in it. A lot more complex than I gave it credit for. Best track: Hurt
Jethro Tull
3/5
There's too much flute on this album. I don't mean this in a stuffy "any flute is too much" kind of way, I just mean there's too. much. flute. Best track: Aqualung
OutKast
5/5
Big Boi and Andre 3000 are so uniquely talented that it was inevitable that they'd eventually go their own ways. It's lucky for us that they decided to collaborate on each other's solo albums and put them out together. The two sides stand completely on their own, but somehow still form a cohesive unit. Best track: Hey Ya!
Ice Cube
3/5
There are times in this album when Cube goes off, and there are times when he settles into his slower delivery with lazy rhymes. He should have kept this thing to 45 minutes and cut out the corny fairy tale allusions. Best track: AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted
Fela Kuti
4/5
Sweet jams. Best track: Let's Start
Buddy Holly & The Crickets
4/5
Oh, oh, and you're Mary Tyler Moore! Best track: That'll Be The Day
Eurythmics
3/5
For synth-pop, it's surprisingly not terrible, even if I wouldn't ever choose to listen to it. Can we talk about the title track? Why are they torturing the pronunciation of "this" to rhyme with "disagree" and "seas," when they can just change the word to "these"? There's no antecedent anyway, so it's not like there's a grammar issue here. Just change the word, weirdos! Best track: Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This [sic])
Fever Ray
2/5
Strange electro-pop that occasionally drifts into interesting, more often swings the other way to annoying. On the opening track you can hear one of the singers smacking their lips. It's disgusting, and it's also somehow their most listened-to track. This doesn't belong on this list. Best track: Now's the Only Time I Know
PJ Harvey
2/5
Can you imagine being as bad at your job as the person who mixed this album? Best track: Rub 'Til It Bleeds
3/5
It's on the list for its importance in defining punk and for defying censors, but when you listen to it, it's kind of just a pretty good live album. I put the title track on my playlist, but beyond that, I doubt I'll think of this album again. Best track: Kick Out The Jams
Richard Hawley
4/5
He didn't do himself any favors by placing the title track, which is generic blue-eyed soul, as the opener. I was ready to hate this album after the first couple of songs, but the sound matured as the album went on. A strange experience. Best track: Wading Through (The Waters of My Time)
2/5
Wikipedia says the album "approaches free jazz from the perspective of hardcore punk, particularly taking note of the contemporary innovations of thrashcore and grindcore." FOH with that horseshit. There's a ton of technical skill on display, but it's masturbatory and painful. Those words shouldn't go together. Best track: Good Old Days
The Go-Betweens
3/5
Lyrically, there's enough angst and intra-band romance/breakup going on that led to this album being known as the "Indie Rumours," but sonically, they back away when they start approaching something interesting. Wasted potential, imo. Best track: Dive For Your Memory
Kanye West
4/5
It can be easy to forget that there was a time before Kanye was (publicly) the guy that President Obama called an asshole. Sure, there are shades of what was to come, and he spends a lot of time bragging about his flow while getting best by the features on the same track, but what was so refreshing about this album is that rap had been pretty well settled into the gangster braggadocio groove for quite some time, and then here's this guy rapping about not wanting to work at The Gap anymore and copping to a bit of Impostor Syndrome. All of that, and it sounded incredible, because of course it did. Best track: Spaceship
Iggy Pop
4/5
The best Iggy Pop album. Punky, groovy, everything you could want. Best track: The Passenger
The Sabres Of Paradise
2/5
You remember that episode of Friends where Ross made a song by playing all the weird noises on his Casio? This is that, but the noises are a yipping dog and a coffee grinder. Also, it was kind of comical when Ross did it. Best track: Wilmot
The Afghan Whigs
3/5
A very 90s alt-rock breakup album. Best track: Brother Woodrow
The Pretty Things
4/5
Psychedelic rock opera that sounds like it was recorded at Abbey Road Studios during the Summer of Love (because it was). Some of the distortion-based experiments didn't work, but this is a great album that was a joy for me to discover. Best track: Bracelets of Fingers
Nick Drake
4/5
This guy is very talented and appears to be very sad. Best track: River Man
The Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy
2/5
It's socially conscious rap, which I'm usually into. The guy has a nice voice, and at its best, it reminds me of Public Enemy, but this album needed a good producer in the worst way. The beats are uninteresting, some of the flows are wack, and he needs to do something besides repeating the name of the track for every single hook. Some of them are catchy, many are not. For example: "Medical racist social statistics / Has everyday life become a health risk?" doesn't even mean anything, and he says this same phrase like 20 times in an otherwise pretty good track. I think my major problem with it is that he can be clever, but he thinks everything he says is clever, and there's a difference. Best track: Satanic Reverses
The Soft Boys
3/5
This album reportedly influenced R.E.M., and you can definitely hear that. I'm just not so sure it stands up on its own. Best track: I Wanna Destroy You
Elvis Costello
2/5
This guy is such an asshole. Best track: Alison
Oasis
3/5
I'm not sure this needed to be on the list. Best track: Supersonic
The Human League
3/5
So, it's got that one song on it. You may not know the song, until you hear it, and then you're like, yeah, that one. So anyway, it's at the very end, and while the songs you have to wade through to get there aren't all bad, they're not that great either. Best track: Don't You Want Me
Lorde
4/5
I've never really spent time with Lorde outside of her hits. This was a pretty great pop album. Apparently Jack Antonoff is the go-to producer for female pop stars now. Best track: Liability
AC/DC
5/5
A perfect album. Best track: Back In Black
Eels
4/5
This album is so mid to late 90s, it evokes images of puka shell necklaces and frosted tips. Pretty good anyway. Best track: Novocaine for the Soul
The Divine Comedy
3/5
I've been trying to come up with a word to describe a person who uses a 27 (ish) piece orchestra to back their music but also pronounces the ells in guillotine. It's somewhere between pseudointellectual and kitsch but without the knowing wink. Anyway, this was at times painful to listen to (especially the last song, which sounds like a bad Phantom of the Opera audition), but also showed bits of promise, so I'm giving a middle-of-the-road score. Best track: Songs of Love
Living Colour
4/5
I thought of this band as a one-hit wonder before today, but that was unfair. This album is full genre-bending goodness. Best track: Cult of Personality
Pink Floyd
5/5
I have a hard time picking a favorite Pink Floyd album. In my mind, they can almost do no wrong. If you put a gun to my head, I'll probably say this one. Or maybe it's The Wall. Or maybe Animals (I'm aware this is an unpopular opinion). No, it's probably this one. Best track: Wish You Were Here
Queens of the Stone Age
3/5
I was really into this type of music back in the day, but listening to it now, it's clear that I just didn't know any better. This was okay. Best track: Regular John
Belle & Sebastian
3/5
This is all a bit twee for me, though I understand the appeal. Best track: The Stars of Track & Field
Supergrass
3/5
Fun, if a bit forgettable. Best track: Sun Hits the Sky
Gang Starr
4/5
Hugely influential. Some of the rhymes didn't age super well, but the influence on subsequent hip hop duos is clear. Best track: Just to Get a Rep
Alexander 'Skip' Spence
3/5
Spence spent time in a mental facility after trying to use a fireaxe on his bandmates, and this album came out of it. It's a bit long and self-indulgent, but I guess he's allowed that if it's what he needs. Best track: Diana
ABBA
3/5
I really enjoy tracks with dark lyrics that sound happy, and there are two great ones on this album. Unfortunately, when you have a 9 track album, you can't afford to put 3 or 4 stinkers on there. Too up and down. Best track: One of Us
Pink Floyd
5/5
I love everything about this album, even the stuff that I would hate if it was found elsewhere. You know why there's never been a good cover of Money? Because using cash register sounds in a song is stupid as hell, and only Pink Floyd can pull it off. Best track: Time
Echo And The Bunnymen
3/5
I found Ocean Rain to be much more interesting. Best track: Happy Death Men
Dr. Octagon
3/5
I'm not going to act like I didn't enjoy some of this, because I did, but it sounds like somebody quickly explained what a concept album was to a 15-year-old, who then came back an hour and a half later with 65 minutes of content. Best track: Waiting List
The Rolling Stones
5/5
It's probably too long, but it's got everything you could want from a Stones album. Maybe my favorite of theirs. Best track: Tumbling Dice
Lucinda Williams
4/5
Really solid Southern roots rock/country featuring Emmylou Harris and Steve Earle. What else could you want? I enjoyed reading about how Lucinda persevered and made it in the music business despite all of the forces working against her. Best track: Drunken Angel
Soul II Soul
3/5
The one song you know from this group only shows up in the Deluxe Edition of the album, which is not something I usually pay attention to. Turns out the a capella tracks from that song are just better anyway. Best track: Back to Life
Grizzly Bear
3/5
An indie darling that I've never been able to really get into, even with a renewed listen. Points for pushing boundaries, but there's not a lot here to really grab onto. Best track: Ready, Able
Motörhead
3/5
If you've heard one of their songs, you've heard them all. Pretty decent song, though. Best track: Ace of Spades
TLC
4/5
Please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you're used to. Best track: Creep
Jefferson Airplane
5/5
Compelling from start to finish. I listened to this three times today and I might go back for more tomorrow. Best track: Somebody to Love
Dusty Springfield
3/5
It's blue-eyed soul, which is not going to get a rise out of me. Inoffensive - except that the album says Memphis, and she recorded her vocals in New York. smh. Best track: Son of a Preacher Man
Jimmy Smith
3/5
I might have been more impressed with this if I hadn't already had the Green Onions album. Best track: Back at the Chicken Shack
Sly & The Family Stone
2/5
I was really looking forward to this album, and it turned out to be a weak fart. The yodeling attempt did not work. Best track: Family Affair
Pavement
3/5
If it's possible for 90s alt rock to be bland, this is. I listened to it three times to be sure and it still failed to make an impression on me. Not great, not terrible. Best track: Cut Your Hair
Talking Heads
2/5
I just about developed a fear of music after sitting through this bullshit. Best track: Heaven
Missy Elliott
2/5
I love Missy E, but this one is a miss. Too many Timbaland ad libs and iffy features. Best track: Hit 'Em wit da Hee
The Who
3/5
It's kind of a shame that this album developed a reputation as the great early rock opera, since The Pretty Things did it first (and better) with S.F. Sorrow. It's not great, not terrible - just like everything else The Who has ever done. Best track: Pinball Wizard
Cat Stevens
5/5
I don't know how you can listen to this and not have a smile on your face. Just a joy. Best track: Father and Son
Everything But The Girl
3/5
Her voice is pleasant. I'm not sure I would ever choose to put this on, but good for them. Best track: Wrong
The Auteurs
2/5
Anemic and generic. Best track: Idiot Brother
The Cardigans
3/5
Better than I expected, but also there weren't any hidden gems that made my playlist. Best track: Lovefool
Air
3/5
What Daft Punk could be if they didn't suck. Best track: Talisman
Ray Charles
4/5
What a fucking achievement this album was. Best track: Bye Bye Love
Bruce Springsteen
3/5
My first Springsteen album was not a fun listen, so I braced myself for this, and it wasn't bad, although the second half tested my patience. "I'm Goin' Down" may be about sexual frustration, but it works better as an ode to oral sex, imo. Best track: No Surrender
Soundgarden
4/5
Soundgarden > Nirvana. Don't @ me. Best track: Black Hole Sun
New Order
4/5
This is the first album with an "acid house" label that I've actually enjoyed. Best track: Run
William Orbit
1/5
I was out 34 seconds into this album. What the fuck was that
The Waterboys
3/5
I'm really conflicted by this album. How can you not love an Scotch-Irish folk rock band singing Yeats? Well, what if they bastardize Woody Guthrie? And what if their Hank Williams tribute sucks? I guess you give them a 3 and move on. Best track: The Stolen Child
Eagles
4/5
I can't hear Witchy Woman without thinking of Seinfeld. Anyway, this was good. Best track: Take It Easy
Bonnie "Prince" Billy
3/5
A bleak indie folk album isn't going to win any points for originality, but at least the execution was nice (most of the time). Best track: I See A Darkness
The xx
3/5
I really like the xx, and I'm learning as I go through this project that I like this genre more than most. This album is too minimalist. It's such a product of its place and time, where indie bands were basically persecuted if they dared to show too much emotion through their music, so they put it all in the words and left the music as an afterthought. That's too harsh an assessment for this particular album, but it's clear they suffered from these influences. Best track: Crystalised
Penguin Cafe Orchestra
3/5
I was expecting either stuffy chamber pop or elevator music. It's a small victory that this was neither. Some weird avant-garde stuff, but nothing too out of the norm. The best track features a reinterpretation of La Bamba, which was fun. Best track: Giles Farnaby's Dream
Elvis Presley
2/5
The fact that Elvis got famous for doing bad Ray Charles and Little Richard covers (among others) is a bit embarrassing. Get your shit together, America. Best track: Blue Suede Shoes
Beatles
4/5
Can't stand the Honey Pie songs, Bungalow Bill, and especially Revolution #9, but there's a ton to like here. The most uneven album of their later years, but still has so many essential songs. Best track: Dear Prudence
Richard Thompson
4/5
Solid folk with great vocals. Best track: Down Where the Drunkards Roll
Caetano Veloso
3/5
I get why it's on the list, but it didn't really grab me. Best track: Alegria, Alegria
Kate Bush
1/5
She literally arfs like a dog during Hounds of Love and it's like the fifth worst thing that happens on this album. Best track: I honestly don't know, and I'm not going to listen again to figure it out
Anita Baker
2/5
A significant portion of this is just 80s easy listening with a nicer than normal voice on top. Best track: Watch Your Step
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
5/5
"It's better to burn out than to fade way" is one of the opening lines of this album, and also its thesis. Side A is Young mourning everything - the death of Elvis, his separation from CSN, his feeling that punk rock was overtaking rock n roll - and it's all set to that familiar acoustic and harmonica set. For Side B, he invites Crazy Horse to join him, and it's almost as if he's trying to burn away the rust. There's a symmetry to this thing, almost a chiastic structure. The first and last tracks are the most obvious pieces of evidence for this, but there are other parallels (Pocahontas and Welfare Mothers, for example). The tight structure and evocative imagery is impressive enough, but hey, it also sounds great. What an album. Best track: My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)
The Sugarcubes
2/5
It's Icelandic B-52s with Björk at the helm. Not what I would call a good time. Best track: Birthday
Fairport Convention
4/5
Damn good British folk rock. Best track: Crazy Man Michael
A Tribe Called Quest
4/5
The pinnacle of laid-back rap. Best track: Can I Kick It?
Funkadelic
4/5
I was surprised to learn that Eddie Hazel had nothing to do with this record. The P-Funk roster is DEEP. Obviously this is funky, but there's a prog rock thing happening here that's super interesting. A couple of the tracks (especially the bits with the repetitive call and response) fell flat for me. Best track: One Nation Under A Groove
Traffic
4/5
This album has a whole lot of genre-bending, which is even more impressive when you consider that it only has 6 tracks. Each song stakes out a slightly different corner in the jazz-blues-prog rock-English folk tapestry that is Traffic. Good stuff. Best track: Every Mother's Son
Jacques Brel
2/5
Everything I've read indicates that this guy is really clever, but that it only comes across if you understand all of the nuances of French. I hope that's the case, because I don't know why you would listen otherwise. Extra star for benefit of the doubt. Best track: Amsterdam
Joy Division
3/5
This doesn't spark joy. Best track: Decades
Queen
4/5
The issue with the two-sided album concept is that invariably one side will be better than the other, which leads to the question, "Why couldn't the entire album be just this side?" In this case, the black side blows the white side out of the water, but maybe they wouldn't have felt free to make it without setting up the contrast. Best track: Ogre Battle
Sugar
3/5
This album sounds like what an AI would output if you fed it a bunch of 90s alt-rock and told it to provide a representative sample. It's not bad, but I don't understand why it's on the list. Best track: Hoover Dam
Sabu
2/5
I want to be respectful of other cultures, but this ain't it. There are three tracks on this album that are worth mentioning. The others are repetitive, borderline nonsensical calls-and-response over congas. Lots and lots of congas. Congas for days. You better really like congas if you're going to pick this one up. Best track: Choferito-Plena
Miles Davis
3/5
Super cool, super smooth. A few tracks I couldn't connect with. Best track: Jeru
Ramblin' Jack Elliott
3/5
Just a folksy dude singing folk standards. He started out as a busker, and once you learn that, you can't unhear it. Woody Guthrie makes an appearance, leading me to wonder, "Couldn't I just be listening to Woody Guthrie instead?" Best track: New York Town
Leonard Cohen
5/5
I'm blown away by the songwriting on this album. The music is understated, yet pleasant, and while it can be kind of same-y, the imagery and turn of phrase overcomes any and all of that. Cohen is one of those artists that I never really got around to, and now I'm wishing I had spent more time with him sooner. Best track: So Long, Marianne
The Byrds
4/5
What a massive album in terms of what it did not only for The Byrds, but Bob Dylan himself and folk rock in general. Of course, if you made a list of the top 5 songs on this album, the four Dylan tracks would all appear. I think we give Gene Clark a bit too much credit as a songwriter. Jingle jangle. Best track: Mr. Tambourine Man
Leonard Cohen
4/5
Like Bowie's Blackstar earlier in the year, Cohen's swansong was released just days before his death. He stares into the void and growls his goodbyes over sparse instrumentation; when it comes to the forefront, it warbles, just like the man singing from a therapy chair in his living room. Cohen said what he had to say and bowed out, and his unflinching contemplation of mortality is left for us to consider. Best track: You Want it Darker
Dexys Midnight Runners
2/5
Starts off somewhat promising (emphasis on somewhat) before progressively devolving until they disappear up their own assholes with the insipid "Come On Eileen," which is a top 5 candidate for "Song I Wish I Could Erase From the World's Consciousness." Best track: Old
Elton John
4/5
A massive album with some massive songs. Maybe it shouldn't have been a double, though? Best track: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Suede
3/5
There's a special place in heaven for animal lovers. Best track: Animal Nitrate
Astrud Gilberto
2/5
Chill Bossa Nova music with no ambition. Track 11 includes a kid who can't sing, which pretty much guarantees a bad grade from me. Best track: Misty Roses
The Mamas & The Papas
4/5
The harmonies are on point, and the hits are hits for a reason. The deeper cuts on this album sound great, but they're kinda basic, which is the only reason this isn't a 5. Best track: California Dreamin'
Miles Davis
4/5
Maybe the most celebrated jazz album of all time. Are we not supposed to talk about the missed notes? Feels like I'm going to get in trouble for bringing it up. Best track: Freddie Freeloader
Incredible Bongo Band
3/5
This album has a track called Dueling Banjos followed by a bongo-trumpet-sax cover of In A Gadda Da Vida. It's all played straight, with no sense of irony. Apparently a bunch of studio musicians got together and made a bongo album for fun [citation needed, I guess?], and then the hip hop world got wind of it and mined it for samples. The music actually wasn't bad, and I'm almost mad about that, because it would have been easier to dunk on it. Instead, I'm just wondering why anybody would need to listen to it 48 years later. What a baffling album. Best track: Apache
Miles Davis
4/5
Probably the best album I'll never listen to start to finish more than once. Best track: Miles Runs the Voodoo Down
Kendrick Lamar
5/5
An innovative work of art. Protest rap over funk, jazz, traditional boom-bap beats from one of the best in the game. Hell yes. Best track: King Kunta
The Black Keys
4/5
I listened to a lot of crap when this came out, so I was afraid that a fresh listen would reveal it to be the same. It holds up. What a great sound they have. Best track: Howlin' For You
Slipknot
2/5
This band has entirely too many members. When you have one guy whose sole responsibility is samples and another whose sole responsibility is turntables, guess what they're going to do? They're going to insert sound effects and scratches as often as they can, regardless of whether or not it makes sense or sounds good. Best track: (sic)
Lenny Kravitz
3/5
Two songs of note and a lot of filler. A good debut. Best track: Let Love Rule
John Prine
4/5
Man, he can tell a story. Best track: Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore
The Go-Go's
4/5
We Got the Beat is the least interesting song on this album. I didn't expect it to be so packed with legit tunes. Best track: Our Lips Are Sealed
Red Hot Chili Peppers
1/5
An incomplete list of things that aged better than this album: pagers, Richard Nixon campaign buttons, Blockbuster, the crab meat you left out on the counter last night, the kid who played young Anakin. Best track: Under the Bridge
Cee Lo Green
2/5
Some of the best albums on this list are genre benders. This one attempts to combine soul and rap, and it falls flat for me. It's not just that Cee-Lo really isn't a rapper (he really, really isn't); even the features don't work. It comes across as confused more than innovative. It's baffling that this made the list and the Gnarls Barkley debut didn't. Best track: The Art of Noise
Talking Heads
3/5
I didn't hate this (which was a surprise), but every time I started getting into it, the Talking Heads guy would do some Talking Heads weird shit. The best line comes from a song called The Big Country: "I wouldn't live there if you paid me." Abilene people know. Best track: Take Me to the River
Blondie
4/5
Surprised me in a good way. Very few swinging strikes, lots of doubles in the gap and homers. Best track: One Way or Another
Baaba Maal
4/5
I never would have given this a chance if it weren't for this project, so score a point for the list. Some really nice guitar work that really grew on me as I listened. Best track: Kettodee
Ice Cube
4/5
This album is like a pure distillation of the early 90s. Best track: Check Yo Self
Thundercat
3/5
A lot of stream-of-consciousness nonsense peppered with some cool tunes. Best track: Friend Zone
Brian Eno
3/5
There's nothing wrong with this, but not much that's remarkable or interesting, either. We really didn't need this many Eno albums on the list. Best track: Spider and I
Kelela
2/5
You're taking me apart, Kelela! I got tired of this after 15 minutes. They really jumped the gun on adding a 2017 album to the list. Nobody will be thinking about this one in 10 years. Best track: Better
Elton John
4/5
Indian Sunset is the only blemish on an otherwise perfect album, but boy, what a blemish it is. Best track: Levon
Finley Quaye
2/5
It's a Scottish dude doing chill reggae. Not as bad as that description, but not good, either. Best track: Even After All
Sarah Vaughan
3/5
She's got an incredible voice, and some of the songs are really great, but it all blends together after awhile. Best track: How High the Moon
The Jam
3/5
I kinda hated this, but there were a couple of songs that saved it from being truly awful. Best track: That's Entertainment
James Brown
3/5
It's hard to pick against James Brown, but the mix was awful and so was all the screaming. This was not the experience I was hoping it would be. Best track: the medley
KISS
2/5
Which is better: KISS, or the ninth grade garage band in your neighborhood? I'm not sure I know the right answer. Best track: Shout It Out Loud
The Clash
4/5
Super fun listen. Best track: White Riot
The Smiths
3/5
I wanted to hate this. Instead I was just mildly annoyed. Best track: There is a Light that Never Goes Out
Muddy Waters
5/5
What a powerhouse of a record. One of my favorites from this project so far. Best track: All of them? Let's go with Crosseyed Cat
Butthole Surfers
1/5
I actually kind of like Gibby Haynes, but this album is an absolute mess. I consulted the book to see why it was on the list, and the reason is basically that it's weird as hell. I went from Muddy Waters one day to this the next. No. Best track: Human Cannonball
Curtis Mayfield
4/5
I don't know where Mr. Mayfield got his information, but Jesus definitely did drink that wine, drink that wine, drink that wine. Anyway, this was smooth as hell. Best track: So in Love
Marvin Gaye
4/5
I worry when I get an album that has That One Song on it, but this one was consistent and smooth all the way through. Best track: Let's Get It On
The Chemical Brothers
3/5
Bwam-dit-dit-dit-dit-duh-dum. Bwam-dit-dit-dit-dit-duh-dum. Bwam-dit-dit-dit-dit-duh-dum. Bwam-dit-dit-dit-dit-duh-dum. (x32) Best track: In Dust We Trust
Lynyrd Skynyrd
5/5
The only thing wrong with this album is that they got their own phonetic spelling wrong. Best track: Tuesday's Gone
The Cars
4/5
Part of me wants to hate The Cars for spawning a dozen shitty imitators, but I guess that's not actually their fault. This is a fun album. Best track: Just What I Needed
The Monks
3/5
I was thinking "protopunk" was an apt descriptor of this sound, and then I looked at Wikipedia and saw that it's a real genre. I thought I was being clever. Oh well. Anyway, this was a fun album, but it would be nice if some of the band members (especially the organ player) would master their instruments before recording. Best track: I Hate You
Sufjan Stevens
5/5
Ambitious and sprawling. This one grew on me as I listened, so I went back for a second dose and it still felt fresh. Has to be considered a modern classic. Best track: Chicago
Bad Brains
2/5
Generic. Unremarkable. Best track: Re-Ignition
3/5
The story about Dylan fighting back against the purists who called him Judas at this concert is cool, but it doesn't mean we need a live best of album on the list. (We also don't get to hear the famous moment. What a tease.) With a couple of notable exceptions, the album cuts are just better. Best track: Just Like a Woman
Spiritualized
4/5
Atmospheric while preserving melody, which is not easy to do, but not quite the achievement that Ladies and Gentlemen is. Best track: You Know It's True
Miriam Makeba
4/5
Man, she's got some pipes. The close harmonies really date it. Best track: Mbube
Jamiroquai
2/5
This is a white dude doing a poor Stevie Wonder impression AND there's a didgeridoo on multiple tracks. I'm more of a didgeri-don't. Plus 1 star because the bass player knows what he's doing. Best track: Blow Your Mind
Liz Phair
3/5
Love the righteous anger, hate the singing voice. Best track: The Divorce Song
4/5
This album is pretty good. If you're going to organize your songs into movements and tell a bunch of tales out of school about being inspired by studying a symphony, you better be breaking some new ground. Like I said, this was pretty good. It might have been a good move to find somebody who can sing. Best track: And You And I
Gene Clark
4/5
I don't understand why this didn't catch on when it came out? It sounds to me like a perfect distillation of the mid-70s folk rock sound. Best track: Strength of Strings
Miles Davis
3/5
After listening to four of his albums, I think I've learned that Miles Davis is the king of cracking a note and then cracking it again when the phrase is repeated so it sounds like the first one was on purpose. If my songs were 20 minutes long, I wouldn't want to do extra takes, either. Best track: Shhh / Peaceful
Elbow
4/5
Elbow are the early to mid 00s English alternative/pop rock band that should have been bigger than Oasis and Coldplay (because they're better). A low bar for some, but I'm not damning them with faint praise. This album is a diverse yet cohesive unit, comprised of anthems, ballads, and weird indie shit, sometimes all in the same song. Somehow it all works. Best track: One Day Like This
The Mars Volta
2/5
The description of this album sounds exponentially more awesome than the album itself. A concept album about a dude in a morphine-induced coma influenced by Miles Davis, Fela Kuti, and Santana? Sign me up! Then you pop it in and the vocalist is doing a Fall Out Boy impression while those influences rarely come to the fore. I haven't been this disappointed by an album in awhile. Best track: Cicatriz ESP
Bob Dylan
4/5
Introspective Dylan is not my favorite Dylan, but this is still some incredible music. Best track: Shelter from the Storm
Portishead
2/5
Critics love female singers who sound like wounded birds, and I can't figure out why. Also, can we calm down with the scratching? Best track: Glory Box
Everything But The Girl
3/5
The name of this group is a lie. Best track: The Night I Heard Caruso Sing
Jane Weaver
3/5
Feels like a flavor of the week that nobody's going to remember in a few years. They really need to let these albums breathe before putting them in a list like this. Best track: The Lightning Back
Bob Marley & The Wailers
4/5
"Catch a fire" is such a great dismissal. Why hasn't that phrase caught on? I'm going to start using it. Best track: Concrete Jungle
PJ Harvey
3/5
Lady British Grunge. This is one of those bands where the frontwoman's poetic voice and presence is what makes the band what they are, but their actual voice holds them back. Some great power chords, though. Best track: Dress
Arrested Development
1/5
I started to give a higher score, but I realized that I was grading it on a curve. The attempt to provide a counterpoint to gangsta rap is noble, but the execution is terrible. This album was dated when it came out, and it's way too on the nose. It couldn't be more on the nose if it was a pimple. That's some terrible wordplay, which is appropriate given the subject. Best track: Mr. Wendal
The Band
5/5
The Great American Album. Name a better fit for that title. You can't. Best track: The Weight
Black Sabbath
4/5
Changes is a hell of a song, but it doesn't really fit the album. Best track: Snowblind
The Sonics
1/5
Somebody told this guy that he should do the James Brown "WAAAAOOOWW!!" scream as often as possible, and he took that advice to heart. At first it was mildly annoying, but by the end of the album (which feels much, much longer than 30 minutes), I was making a mental note to avoid this band in the future at all costs. Best track: Whichever one has the lowest WAAAOOOWW to time ratio. I'm not going to listen again to figure it out
Prince
5/5
Legendary. Sent me down the rabbit hole of watching live performances. His Super Bowl halftime show may never be topped. Best track: Purple Rain
Siouxsie And The Banshees
4/5
I came into this with some skepticism, but dammit if this wasn't haunting in all the right ways. Best track: Night Shift
The Doors
3/5
Really like The Doors. This is not my favorite album of theirs. Lots of samey sounding songs. Best track: Roadhouse Blues
Boards of Canada
2/5
Ambient electronica. I think I recognized one of the songs from a soundtrack or something. The rest is not worth mentioning or thinking about again. Best track: Roygbiv
Paul McCartney and Wings
4/5
The best of post-Beatles McCartney. Best track: Band on the Run
Lambchop
2/5
Wikipedia lists the genre of this album as "Countrypolitan," which is a cursed word that should not exist. After listening to this guy's falsetto, the jury is out on the band itself as well. Best track: Up with People
Peter Frampton
2/5
I was pleasantly surprised that this wasn't 77 minutes of Frampton with his effing talk box, but it was still a mediocre guitar rock concert. There were about half a dozen songs that the crowd pretended to like, a self-indulgent not-that-great Stones cover, and a couple of good tunes. Oh, and a talk box finale that made me want to play in traffic. Best track: Baby, I Love Your Way
The Kinks
3/5
A pleasant vibe, but not very many songs you can grab onto. Mostly empty calories. Best track: Waterloo Sunset
Björk
2/5
The thing that pisses me off about Björk is that it's all a fake. Like, you start to think to yourself, "It's not her fault that her voice is so breathy and anemic; it's just who she is. I'm a jerk. I should just let her be who she is." And then she closes her record with a powerhouse of a song, and it's like, "Wait, you were able to sing like that the whole time?! You were choosing to sound like a wounded animal?" I don't get it, man. Best track: Unison
Dr. Dre
5/5
The innovator of G-Funk. Dre and Snoop are both incredible on this album. Very few weak spots. Best track: Nuthin' but a 'G' Thang
The Who
3/5
The Who is the most maddening band on this list. Their hits are undeniably great, but the deeper cuts on every album I've ever heard of theirs are aggressively awful. The Song is Over and Going Mobile make me want to dive headfirst into a pool full of broken glass. At least this wasn't another mediocre rock opera. Best track: Baba O'Riley
Buffalo Springfield
4/5
This album is like the bridge between folk and psychedelica without being a blend of the two. I don't know if that makes sense to anybody else. Best track: Hung Upside Down
Iggy Pop
4/5
Low side A. Best track: China Girl
Metallica
4/5
The first time I ever encountered the concept of "selling out" was when I was probably 11 or 12. This kid in my Boy Scout troop wanted everybody to know that the Black Album sucks because "it sounds too good." Now, whenever I listen to this album, I picture a greasy-haired kid trying to look cool with his half-buttoned Class A shirt trying to think of reasons he hates it because he knows he's supposed to. I'm not trying to say that selling out or going commercial doesn't sometimes mean compromising artistic integrity, but the furor over Metallica making their music listenable is hilarious to me. This album owns. Best track: Nothing Else Matters
X-Ray Spex
3/5
I didn't hate this, but boy did it get old quickly. Best track: Obsessed with You
The Police
3/5
It turns out Every Breath You Take isn't the only creepy song they wrote. Is this a cry for help? Best track: Every Breath You Take
3/5
Half latin jazz, half mediocre electronica. Best track: Antropofagos
The Isley Brothers
4/5
Smooth and goes down easy, but with plenty of complex notes. Best track: That Lady
Paul Weller
2/5
I think I'm running out of ways to say, "This isn't completely terrible, but why is it on the list?" If this album is on your list of essentials, you might want to take a step back and ask if your list is too big. Best track: Country
Christine and the Queens
2/5
This album has a cultural importance that shouldn't be ignored, but musically, this brand of pop does less than nothing for me. Best track: Girlfriend
Jeff Beck
3/5
Flashes of greatness, but also plenty of bloat to go around. If he'd made this an EP and cut out the bullshit, it would be a legendary album. Best track: Beck's Bolero
Siouxsie And The Banshees
2/5
Siouxsie was on her bullshit for this one. Best track: Jigsaw Feeling
The Undertones
3/5
Seems like every couple of weeks I get an album that's supposed to be punk royalty, and I don't think I've been impressed by one of them yet. I thought I liked punk. Maybe I don't. Best track: Billy's Third
The Young Rascals
2/5
Tracks 4-6 are solid, but the rest is bad blue-eyed soul. Don't cover Stevie Wonder if you can't hang. Best track: Groovin'
MC Solaar
4/5
Caught me by surprise in a good way. Really chill French rap with lyrics that are clever even through Google Translate. Best track: Qui sème le vent récolte le tempo
Iron Maiden
4/5
I wonder what the Iron Maiden boys think about the whiny song about being a teenage dirtbag. I figure that they partly think they're above it and partly think it's pretty cool to be name-checked like that. Best track: Iron Maiden
Taylor Swift
4/5
Swift has always been more than just a singer of vindictive breakup songs, as her detractors say. The sister lockdown albums have "I'm more than what you think" written all over them, and the indie folk sound suits her well. I never thought I'd be a guy who has strong opinions about how Taylor Swift's albums are ranked, but...folklore is better. Best track: Happiness
Beyoncé
3/5
Feels like she wanted to make a horny Prince album. Idk, Prince never had lame Drake features on his albums. Best track: XO
Todd Rundgren
3/5
This was a little much. Best track: Couldn't I Just Tell You
Led Zeppelin
5/5
I got this album several days ago and I'm just now getting around to listening to the ones I've gotten in the interim because this has been on repeat. Just incredible. Best track: Kashmir
Queen Latifah
2/5
When she's on, she's on, but there are too many tracks that don't work. This did not age well at all. Best track: Dance for Me
M.I.A.
4/5
This one has some absolute bangers. Best track: Paper Planes
Ramones
3/5
It might be a little harsh to say that this is 14 versions of the same song, because there are a couple that are doing interesting things, but only a little. It's a 29-minute album that feels longer than that because they've kinda got one trick. Best track: Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue
Mylo
3/5
This album is bookended by some very nice songs, but in the middle Mylo disappears up his own asshole. Good for making playlists, but not for sitting down and listening for an hour, as that's liable to drive one insane. Best track: Emotion 98.6
Brian Eno
3/5
This perfectly captures the ennui of sitting in an airport, so points for doing what it says on the tin. Album you must listen to before you die? I'm not so sure about that. Best track: 2/2
Roni Size
1/5
This is my 439th album and the first one I haven't finished. After 7.5 tracks, I know what they're going for. I don't need to listen to 14.5 more of the same thing. They broke my spirit. It's drum and bass with unimaginative lyrics and mediocre vocals. Best track: N/A
Al Green
4/5
Had this album on repeat all day. So smooth. Best track: Let's Stay Together
John Cale
4/5
I braced myself for the electric viola and was pleasantly surprised. Best track: Half Past France
Guns N' Roses
4/5
Nothing notable outside the big three. Best track: Sweet Child O' Mine
Radiohead
5/5
Radiohead is really great at (for example) saying, "We want to do a song that evokes Bitches Brew, but we want to make it our own," and then they execute it perfectly and it's super impressive, with thoughtful lyrics and everything. Occasionally, though, they forget to make the music enjoyable to listen to. That only happens a few times on this album, which is what makes it their best one. Also, they perfectly captured the 21st century zeitgeist in 1997. How? Best track: Paranoid Android
The Birthday Party
1/5
Google started recommending therapists to me after I listened to this. Best track: She's Hit (??)
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
3/5
Even as a Neil Young apologist, this was a bit much for me. Best track: White Line
Magazine
3/5
Buzzcocks without the teeth. Best track: Shot by Both Sides
Marvin Gaye
5/5
Wow, this was raw. Powerful stuff. Best track: A Funky Space Reincarnation
UB40
3/5
Red, Red Wine really, really sucks, but this is not that, so it turned out to be better than I expected. However, it's still reggae made by white guys from Birmingham (lol). The instrumentals are the best parts. Best track: Adella
The Icarus Line
3/5
The White Stripes are already on this list. Do we need their imitators, too? Best track: Spike Island
Meat Loaf
4/5
Sounds like the soundtrack to a musical, and of course it was made into one 40 years later. It's not just any musical, though - it's a zany, nostalgic, rock opera, Springsteen parody (ish), retelling of Peter Pan. A wild ride. Long live the Loaf. Best track: Paradise by the Dashboard Light
The Jesus And Mary Chain
4/5
Powerpop + distortion = this. Surprised me in a good way, though there were a couple of tracks I'd like to permanently delete. Best track: Some Candy Talking
The Dave Brubeck Quartet
3/5
Crack for time signature nerds. At the end of the day, it's a jazz quartet with an alto sax instead of a horn, so that's going to limit my personal enjoyment, but it absolutely belongs here. Best track: Take Five.
The Stooges
3/5
Not a lot of tracks, and a lot of them sound very similar. Nice sound, though. Best track: I Wanna Be Your Dog
The Cure
4/5
Jesus, just go see a therapist. Best track: Cold
Frank Black
3/5
I listened to this several times to try to wrap my head around what he was going for. My conclusion is that he needs an editor. There's too much here, and it's so painfully 90s alt-rock. That's a plus on some songs, but a huge negative on others. Best track: Freedom Rock
Paul Revere & The Raiders
3/5
This isn't the Beastie Boys? Best track: All I Really Need is You
Eagles
3/5
I don't hate the Eagles like The Dude does, but some of their songs beat me down; Hotel California is chief among them, with Life in the Fast Lane close behind. The fact that both are on this album makes it a slog, but it was better than I wanted to admit. Still not something I would ever put on voluntarily. Best track: The Last Resort
Roxy Music
3/5
Sounds like they sat down to listen to Bowie and their main takeaway was, "We should be weird like him!" Some of it worked and some of it very much did not. Best track: Virginia Plain
The Blue Nile
2/5
The whole time it was playing I just wanted it to stop. Best track: Tinseltown in the Rain
Bon Jovi
3/5
Goddammit. I really, really want to hate Bon Jovi. Their product is a lowest common denominator synthetic approximation of music, delivered without so much as a knowing wink. They either have contempt for their audience or are too stupid to know the difference. I imagine it might be some of both. But, as the great Robert Christgau says, "Are you really immune to 'Livin' on a Prayer'?" No, Robert. I am not. Best track: Livin' on a Prayer
Foo Fighters
3/5
I like the idea of this album more than I like the album itself. Best track: Big Me
T. Rex
4/5
Weird in a delightful way. Rewards multiple listens. I love the sound of this band. Best track: Cosmic Dancer
Iron Maiden
5/5
I should have checked this out earlier in my life. Best track: Hallowed Be Thy Name
Sam Cooke
3/5
Sam Cooke is great. Understatement of the year. I don't understand why the editors of this list have a problem with best of albums while also including several "live from a night club" entries. I want to hear the music, not the banter between artist and crowd. He had plenty of studio albums. At least one of those should have made the cut instead. Best track: Medley: It's All Right/For Sentimental Reasons
The Fall
1/5
A drunk asshole mumbles into a microphone while the bass player uses studio time to learn scales and the rhythm guitar does whatever it wants. Occasionally, a girl who can't carry a tune shows up to sing. Might be tolerable if they were sticking it to the man or something, but it's all pseudointellectual navel-gazing. Best track: Mansion
Public Enemy
4/5
Some of these tracks sound like demos that were never updated. It still slaps, though. Best track: Bring the Noise
Scott Walker
2/5
When you pull off the crooner thing, you're cool and refined. When you don't, you're schmaltzy. Scotty 2 Hotty is very schmaltzy. Best track: Jackie
Elastica
3/5
Started off strong and faded fast. The back half of the album is basically a 20-minute long song chopped up into tiny tracks. Best track: Line Up
Stan Getz
2/5
This is probably going to seem hypocritical if you look at some of my other reviews, but does an album really need to included if it popularized a genre? Nobody needs to listen to bossa nova before they die. Sorry to all the tenor sax enthusiasts out there. Best track: Desafinado
John Grant
4/5
I'm a sucker for songwriters that can make non-lyrical lines singable, and that's this entire album. Some of these songs are absolutely hilarious and absurd - in a good way. There's also a song with a slur in the title that I won't type because I'm on a government computer, and it's a very honest, biting satire. Not something you want to listen to without headphones in, but also not what you think it is. Super fun. I've listened three times and I'll go back for at least another. Best track: Outer Space
Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five
3/5
Legendary for launching a genre, but boy, is it dated. I'm also not sure the Stevie Wonder tribute was relevant or listenable when it was released. Best track: The Message
The Zombies
5/5
How in the world was this not the biggest album on the planet? I thought it was here because of the one single that everybody knows, but so many of the other tracks reached up and slapped me out of nowhere. Incredible. Best track: Time of the Season
Steve Earle
4/5
Steve Earle is everything the critics think about Dwight Yoakam, only his voice is pleasant to listen to and he writes a hell of a lyric. Long live Waylon. Best track: Guitar Town
Portishead
2/5
This band could be pretty cool if they didn't have a Björk wannabe standing at the front. Best track: The Rip
Bob Marley & The Wailers
5/5
It's quite an accomplishment to make music that's so chill and still makes people want to move. Best track: No Woman No Cry
Ride
3/5
What do you do when you're a Britpop band in the early 90s with two singers that can't really carry a tune all that well? You bury them in the mix, turn up the guitars, and ride the wave (sorry) of the burgeoning shoegaze movement. A few triumphant moments, but they're a little too sparse. Best track: Vapour Trails
Solange
2/5
Important subject matter, but delivered in such a bland, unremarkable way that it makes me not want to care. The features are by far the best parts. Also, interludes? What is this, 1994? Best track: Mad
Radiohead
4/5
Much more listenable than I remember, though Thom still had some shaky moments on the vocals. At some point, he has to stop getting away with hitting a note too low and then bending his voice. It's okay to do another take. Best track: Fake Plastic Trees
The Pharcyde
4/5
So much skill and silliness, but the replay value is a bit limited for me. Best track: Passin' Me By
Sly & The Family Stone
4/5
A bit uneven with a rocky start, but that's forgivable; they were pioneering and perfecting a genre. A stone cold classic. Best track: Everyday People
Guided By Voices
1/5
This album is 41 minutes long and has 28 tracks. It's like an amuse-bouche concept album, which could be cool if the band making it were competent or interesting in any way. In the hands of a shitty mid-90s indie pop rock band that loves to drop homophobic slurs whenever they get a chance, it's annoying at best. Best track: Alright
The Smiths
2/5
I cannot begin to understand the effusive praise offered upon this mediocre band by the (mostly English) press. Something about The Smiths apparently prompts some irrepressible urge to hurl superlatives upon them. The book calls them "Manchester's finest sons." Marr "amaze[s] with his guitar palette" and Morrissey (sorry, Moz) shows "the first signs of real hurt in his words." Another review I found lauded the "quintessentially ‘Morrissey’ themes and blunt lyrics...presented over a suitably more muscular and athletic musical accompaniment." Lads, it's an arsehole moaning into a microphone while his slightly less shitty friend plugs away on some lackluster melodies that you forget as soon as you hear it. Give your heads a wobble. Wankers. Best track: Well I Wonder
Harry Nilsson
3/5
Weird in a pleasant way, but not much stood out to me apart from the Coconut song. Best track: Coconut
The Verve
4/5
I bought this album when it came out because of Bittersweet Symphony alone, and my blind faith that there would be more than just the one track paid off. That didn't always happen. To this day I still get The Drugs Don't Work stuck in my head at odd times. Lightning in a bottle. Best track: Bittersweet Symphony
Mike Oldfield
2/5
This was fine until the werewolf showed up. Best track: Tubular Bells, Part One
Alice Cooper
3/5
I'm not the hugest fan of Clint Eastwood playing the same character in all of his movies, but even I'll admit that he makes a pretty good grizzled boxing coach. Hilary Swank steals the show, though. Best track: Generation Landslide
Dinosaur Jr.
3/5
I'm not sure if this is good, but it's certainly fun. I love their sound, shaky vocals notwithstanding. Best track: Freak Scene
Prefab Sprout
2/5
I was expecting music you could play during a car chase or maybe a gunfight. Instead it was something your weird aunt might put on during teatime. Best track: Bonny
Beastie Boys
4/5
This is the Beasties at their rawest and rudest. The contrast between this, their worst record, and Paul's Boutique, their next and best offering, is staggering. Still a lot of fun. Best track: Brass Monkey
Steely Dan
2/5
At one point during the title track, I thought to myself, "This one has to be over soon, right?" and when I looked at the elapsed time, it wasn't even halfway done. What a slog. Give me their earlier stuff, but not this. This is yacht rock with extra steps. Best track: Josie
Black Flag
3/5
Chaotic and fun. Also really effing dumb. I understand that this is the point, but it also doesn't make me like it any more than I do. Best track: TV Party
The Clash
5/5
It's amazing how many genres they fit into this album, and they do them all well. Great to listen to as well. An all-around great record. Best track: London Calling
LCD Soundsystem
4/5
A couple of ill-advised Talking Heads impersonations, but otherwise a great listen. Best track: call the police
Air
2/5
The rhythm of the guitar riff on Clouds Up is the same as the chorus of 50 Cent's In da Club. Once you realize that, this album is 50% more fun. Best track: Highschool Lover
Minor Threat
3/5
Apparently these guys invented Straight Edge. I'm not sure I would want to put that on my resume, but we've all got to forge our way in this world, and they found something that works for them, which is nice. Best track: Cashing In
N.W.A.
4/5
Thought it was an easy 5 coming in, but some of the deeper cuts didn't age well at all. Still has some all-time bangers, though. Best track: Fuck tha Police
Digital Underground
1/5
Ill advised. Overly long. Not nearly as clever or as culturally relevant as the creators imagine. Honestly, it's just really, really dumb. I hate that I had to waste an hour on this. Best track: (not found)
Big Black
2/5
One halfway-interesting track and a whole lot of noise. Best track: Kerosene
The Temptations
4/5
One absolute banger of a tune that takes up 1/3 of the album. The other 2/3 I could take or leave. Best track: Papa Was a Rollin' Stone
Kanye West
3/5
I'm super conflicted by this album, and I'm not the only one. In Pitchfork's 2013 Readers Poll, Yeezus was named both the Most Underrated and Most Overrated album of the year. The solo follow-up to MBDTF, Kanye's magnum opus, doesn't quite measure up. There's the usual helping of inane lyrics (Does Kanye know that 300 didn't feature any Romans?), the overuse of autotune, and the braggadocio, which he does better than anyone else (just ask him). But there's also the delightful use of obscure samples expertly married with cutting-edge beats, punctuated by excellent collaborations and features. This album also features the most Kanye song he's ever put together: Blood on the Leaves, a catchy tune about love and divorce where Ye spends half a verse talking about the cost of his wardrobe. Pretty standard stuff, except it's all happening on top of a sample of a 1965 tune about lynching that's been called one of the most important songs of the 20th century. The thesis of this album, made by a self-professed evangelical Christian who gives the middle finger to both Catholics and Baptists, and oh yeah, the thing is called YEEZUS, is that nothing is off-limits for Kanye. Best track: Bound 2
Rod Stewart
2/5
I don't have a rational reason for saying this, but I don't buy anything this guy is trying to sell. He seems skeezy. Probably not fair to the dude, but how I feel is how I feel. Best track: Maggie May
Rocket From The Crypt
3/5
This is a slightly more palatable Smashmouth. I waffled between a 2 and a 3 and eventually went higher on the strength of their best song. Best track: Young Livers
Supergrass
3/5
Fun little record. Best track: Alright
Nitin Sawhney
4/5
A super clever fusion album. Sawhney collaborates with a number of artists to meld several disaparate styles. Some of these songs weren't my bag, but the format of the album is such that if you don't like something, all you have to do is wait a bit and something better is on the horizon. Really well constructed. Best track: Broken Skin
JAY Z
4/5
Would it be extremely white of me to suggest that the best track is the one that features Eminem? So be it. Not sure I understand why this is on the list but The Black Album isn't. Best track: Renegade
Derek & The Dominos
4/5
Layla is an obvious classic, but I can't shake the feeling that I just listened to a guy masturbate for 75 minutes. The fact that it's Clapton makes it even more gross. A little more restraint in all areas of your life, please. Best track: Layla
Television
3/5
It's fine. I struggle to see why it's on a list like this. Dad rock. Best track: Guiding Light
Willie Colón & Rubén Blades
5/5
I love a good horn section, and the horns here are INCREDIBLE. The musicianship is off the charts all the way around, and the storytelling is rich and clever to boot. I enjoyed the sarcastic West Side Story reference. Best track: Pedro Navaja
Adele
4/5
She's got some pipes. Best track: Someone Like You
5/5
I love this album so much. Best track: Starman
Joni Mitchell
5/5
What a songwriter. I should have reserved the 5 score for albums like this that are the best of the best. Best track: A Case of You
Primal Scream
3/5
It sounds like they watched Blade Runner and didn't quite understand it, but decided to make a soundtrack based on their idea of it anyway. Just lots of chill 2019 vibes from the late 90s. Best track: Kowalski
Talking Heads
1/5
Nothing about this band and especially this album appeals to me. Weird dance breaks with the sax, the fa-fa-fa chorus, nonsensical lyrics. Am I supposed to find it entertaining? clever? pleasant to listen to? It's none of those things. Best track: Psycho Killer, I guess. Says more about the rest of the album than anything else
Gene Clark
4/5
I get annoyed when Clark is listed among the great songwriters; to me, he's a tier or two below that. That doesn't mean he's a bad songwriter, though, and there's some good stuff here, even if it is a bit mellow and same-y. Best track: For a Spanish Guitar
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
2/5
On a certain level, Costello's music is likable enough. He's melding various styles and doing his own thing, which is good. The thing is, he's so smarmy and artificial that I can't help but think of him as the musical equivalent of a grifter. Best track: The Loved Ones
Frank Sinatra
3/5
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little disappointed by this album, which is basically just a collection of standards. Essential if you're into Sinatra, but otherwise...maybe not. Best track: Ill Wind
Beastie Boys
5/5
This collaboration between the Beastie Boys and the Dust Brothers is a legendary achievement. I highly recommend the 33 1/3 book about the making of this record. I also recommend you check out a playlist or Youtube video that breaks down all the samples. Best track: Shake Your Rump
Lou Reed
3/5
There are three and half really good songs on here. It should have been an LP, because the rest of it is super dumb. Like, really, really dumb. Best track: Satellite of Love
Slint
3/5
Every once in awhile, some music theory nerds sneak in through a propped open studio door so they can make and release a record, and for some reason, every time that happens, a new entry is created on this list. It's creative, but is it interesting? The answer in this case is a huge meh. Best track: Nosferatu Man
Metallica
4/5
I got so much work done today. What an album. I'm really into the instrumental. Best track: Orion
Jazmine Sullivan
3/5
This album is yet another example of the reason they need to let these records breathe before adding them to a list like this. While the messages are timeless, the music is going to age like unpasteurized milk. Three of the songs use that terrible mumble trap triplet flow, which is three too many. Best track: Lost One
Serge Gainsbourg
1/5
On paper, this sounds like a terrible album: French beat poetry about a fling between a middle-aged man and a 15-year-old girl. In reality, it's actually worse than that. Serge goes to great pains to explain just how rich he is. He spends a whole song talking about his Rolls Royce, and another one describing going on about the interior décor of his luxurious hotel. But he's sad, and here's a pretty girl he just happened to notice. Won't she be a nice trophy? "Don't tell me if you're not a virgin," he says in so many words, because that would ruin the experience.
I mean, what the fuck.
I guess I should mention that the backing music is nice, but I already feel dirty for giving this guy half a cent by listening to his album on Spotify. If I ever want to relive the vibe, I'll just go find Beck's stuff and listen with a clean conscience. Best track: Cargo culte (for the backing choir)
Metallica
4/5
Something Metallica gets that a lot of similar bands don't is that the throttle doesn't have to be at 112% all the time. Best track: One
The Jesus And Mary Chain
3/5
A rare 80's pop rock album that isn't incredibly dated. It's also not super memorable in any way. Best track: Darklands
The Temptations
4/5
A very uneven album, but the funky tracks are so fire that I don't even care. Best track: Cloud Nine
Arcade Fire
5/5
This is not Arcade Fire's best album, but it is their most focused and complete. Nothing quite captures the despairing ennui of suburban life quite like The Suburbs. It's critical, of course - "dead shopping malls rise like mountains beyond mountains" isn't the most singable line, but they make it sound sickly sweet - but there are also touches of nostalgia (We Used to Wait and Rococo) to balance out the despair (City with No Children. among others) and outright panic (Month of May). It's a successful concept album that's more than the sum of its parts, but the parts are damn good to start with. Best track: Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)
Beastie Boys
4/5
One thing I really like about this record is that it sounds like they just stopped caring about what would be commercially successful and did whatever they wanted to do, which was apparently lay down some chill jams, occasionally interrupted by something really frenetic. Best track: Sabotage
2/5
This is 59 minutes of the woohoo band not doing the woohoo song. Generic and boring, except for a couple of occasions where they go out of their way to be aggressively irritating. Does not belong anywhere near a list of essential music. Best track: Villa Rosie (the junior woohoo song)
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark
4/5
I expected to hate this, but it was (mostly) kind of great. At its best, it's layered and interesting and way ahead of its time. It's not always at its best, though. Too much 80's Mellotron and questionable singing. Best track: Joan of Arc (Maid of Orleans)
The Crusaders
2/5
I would rather not listen to somebody pretend to be Kenny G. I don't understand the appeal, but clearly somebody likes this shit. Best track: My Lady
The Smashing Pumpkins
4/5
The lyrics on nearly every song on this album sound like they were composed by an android who learned about human emotion by studying a 14-year-old's diary. The whole thing is overly long, self-indulgent, and sounds like it was ripped off of a dozen other contemporary bands. Billy Corgan can't sing and is a humongous asshole in real life. Despite all of this, I unironically really, really like it. Maybe it's nostalgia. Maybe I'm a sucker for adolescent Big Feelings expressed in an objectively mediocre way. I think it's just that I decided I enjoyed their sound in sixth grade, so now it hits the part of my brain that makes me happy, even though it shouldn't. Best track: Bullet with Butterfly Wings
Ray Price
3/5
You can just barely hear the beginnings of Willie's brand of outlaw country on the few tracks he's responsible for. Otherwise, it's honky-tonk accompanied by strings. Best track: Night Life
Tito Puente
4/5
This album makes me want to quit my job and play the trumpet full-time. Best track: Mambo Gozon
Joy Division
2/5
I'm sure I'm not the first asshole to point out that this band is ironically named, but...it is. You can't just put the word "joy" in your name and then fart into a microphone and call it a day. Best track: I'm not sure. I kept trying to pay attention but it was just. so. boring
Eminem
3/5
This simply didn't age well. Still some sick rhymes, though. Best track: Brain Damage
Mike Ladd
2/5
Those "deep thoughts" you have when you're high aren't actually that profound, and you definitely shouldn't build an entire album around them. Best track: 5,000 Miles West of the Future
David Bowie
4/5
I suppose that if you were of the opinion that there are too many Bowie albums on the list, you'd choose this one as one of the ones to go. It's still Bowie and still great, though. Best track: The Jean Genie
Jane's Addiction
3/5
The vocals grate after awhile, but this was more enjoyable than I expected. Also: boobs. Best track: Jane Says
Leonard Cohen
2/5
This one was super weird. Love the imagery and turn of phrase in the songwriting; absolutely hate the backing vocals and the corny string arrangements. A baffling album. Best track: Tower of Song
Tom Waits
3/5
Tom Waits is a guy who is so far off the beaten path that I guess you have to accept the bad weird stuff because it also allows him to come up with the good weird stuff. There's plenty of both here. Best track: Tango Till They're Sore
Adele
4/5
21 is more consistent, but 25 has the higher highs. Best track: Hello
The Who
3/5
This should have been better. The Who's hits are great, and for some reason they decided to insert a bunch of filler and bad covers into their setlist. When they actually played a decent song, they inserted a bunch of barely related, bloated solos. Can you imagine plunking down actual cash to see this? Best track: Happy Jack - Live
Stereo MC's
3/5
A one-hit wonder album. The rest of the stuff sounds enough like the hit to make it enjoyable, but it's not different or adventurous enough to make it interesting. Best track: Connected
Metallica
3/5
There are moments when the band and the orchestra really gel and create something pretty cool, but they are few and far between. In fact, there are more moments where it's clear that they must have only rehearsed together once or twice. This must have been a really fun concert, but did it need to be immortalized? It's a glorified remix album. Best track: No Leaf Clover
Aerosmith
3/5
I used to love this album, but there's so much about it I just don't connect to anymore. It's not them; it's me. Maybe it's a little bit them. Their music is just so damn horny. Best track: Going Down/Love in an Elevator
The Stooges
3/5
It feels like an incomplete demo. The roots of something interesting are here. Best track: Down on the Street
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
2/5
A couple of listenable tracks amongst a whole heap of horseshit. Best track: Wail
Aretha Franklin
4/5
A powerhouse of a record. The fadeouts on every song were slightly annoying, but that's more of a function of the era than anything else. Best track: I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)
The Teardrop Explodes
2/5
Lots of 80s shlock. Anything interesting is just about ruined by the voice of Julian Cope. Oh no, I guess I won't be welcome in England now. What a pity. Best track: Poppies in the Field
The La's
4/5
Fun little album. I was convinced going in that this was a one-hit wonder whose one hit was played better by multiple other bands, but they won me over. Best track: There She Goes
Van Halen
4/5
What a run of opening songs. A great album that kinda sags in the middle. Best track: Runnin' with the Devil
Cheap Trick
3/5
I enjoyed this way more than I thought I would. At the end of the day, it's a live album with a ton of screaming. We couldn't get a Cheap Trick studio album on the list instead? Best track: Surrender
Bob Marley & The Wailers
5/5
The dude survived an assassination attempt and then put together one of the most biting commentaries ever put to music together, and it was all so chill and funky and fire all at once. A generational talent
Slipknot
3/5
I support this music. If it helps one angsty teen process his anger in a way that doesn't end in a school shooting, it's a win. Does everybody need to hear it before they die? No. It wasn't as bad as I expected it to be, though. Best track: All Hope is Gone
The Hives
4/5
A super fun garage punk record. Not sure why a compilation album is here, but I enjoyed it anyhow. Probably should be replaced by one of their studio albums. Best track: Hate to Say I Told You So
Jungle Brothers
4/5
This actually aged really well, especially when compared to similar projects of the era. All hail ATCQ and De La Soul. Best track: Sunshine
Randy Newman
3/5
There are a couple of great songs in here, but a whole album of Randy Newman (even if it is only 30 minutes) is just too much. Best track: Sail Away
PJ Harvey
4/5
Of the four PJ Harvey albums I've had so far, this one is by far the best. At times a haunting intersection of interesting muscality and thoughtful lyrics. (It's also sometimes annoying.) Best track: In the Dark Places
Garbage
3/5
Better than I expected/remembered, but it's kind of two songs and a lot of filler. Best track: Stupid Girl
Genesis
3/5
Because the world needed more navel-gazing about England. Best track: I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)
Aphex Twin
2/5
Ambient House. You can keep it. Nothing to distinguish it from one track to the next. Best track: N/A
Pulp
3/5
I suppose "This is mediocre smarmy Britpop" was rejected by the marketing department. Best track: TV Movie
Small Faces
3/5
Weird psychedelic nonsense. The parts without the talking sound damn good. Best track: Afterglow
Jane's Addiction
2/5
About halfway through, this album flipped from "inoffensive" to "annoying." I can't take more than about 10-15 minutes of this singer. Best track: Been Caught Stealing
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
4/5
The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band somehow got a bunch of legends from the previous generation to sit down with them and make an album that bridges the gap. Incredible to listen to. I like the interludes, but they got to be a bit much toward the end. Volume 2 should absolutely be on this list. Best track: Foggy Mountain Breakdown
5/5
This album is a 10 out of 10, and that's before you get to the final track, which is one of the greatest pop songs ever recorded and ends with THAT chord - a chord so iconic it has its own liner notes. I don't care about any debate about how influential or overrated or whatever this album is, or about how it compares to Pet Sounds or anything else. All I know is it ends with John Lennon literally reading a newspaper while Paul combs his hair, culminating in a chaotic semi-improvised orchestral glissando and a 40-second long chord that sticks in your soul and your chest long after it's over. Bravo. Best track: A Day in the Life
Rufus Wainwright
2/5
This was way too (two?) long and overindulgent. Two observations for this album with an inexplicable "two" in its name: (1) I'll give two to one odds that songs from the album have been used in at least two dozen coming-of-age indie films. (2) The line about being baptized in cum might have been clever on paper. Not so much in practice. Best track: Agnus Dei
fIREHOSE
3/5
It wasn't bad, but it also didn't really make an impression on me. I'm not surprised that I've never heard of them. I imagine that most people forget about them as soon as they're done listening. Best track: The Softest Hammer
Electric Light Orchestra
4/5
There are moments where ELO is way too disco-adjacent for me, but the strength of Side 3 of this record is enough to cover over a multitude of sins. Best track: Summer and Lightning
The Kinks
3/5
Have you ever thought about what the Beatles might have sounded like if they were just okay at songwriting and three years behind everybody else? Wonder no more! Best track: Sunny Afternoon
Pretenders
2/5
This felt like a chore. Best track: ?
Abdullah Ibrahim
3/5
I always appreciate jazz more when a brass horn is involved. In this case, the tracks featuring the trombone were on point. There just weren't enough of them to make me get excited about the entire album. Best track: Sameeda
Paul Simon
3/5
Sometimes I really appreciate Paul Simon's songwriting, and other times he starts out a song with a word like "paraphernalia" for no discernible reason, and I just don't get it. He needs a Garfunkel to edit him and push down his weirder instincts. Best track: Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard
Fats Domino
4/5
This is a great listen, but it's the only Fats album on the list, and it's not his best one. They should have included Rock and Rollin' with Fats Domino. Best track: Blueberry Hill
The Adverts
4/5
Did you know that British people call chicken sandwiches "burgers"? As if the bun is what makes it a burger. Wtf, England. They also abbreviate advertisements as "adverts" instead of "ads," because I guess they don't understand the point of abbreviations. Finally, their punk bands are typically pale imitators of the format, soullessly checking boxes on a form as if punk is a series of requirements rather than an attitude. Thankfully, that's not the case here, even if they still call them "adverts." Best track: Great British Mistake (I assume this song is about the burger/sandwich thing. Please don't @ me if that's wrong, because in that case I don't want to know)
Jerry Lee Lewis
4/5
Jesus, Jerry, you're going to break the piano. Best track: Mean Woman Blues
Hüsker Dü
2/5
An interminably long record from what appears to be an R.E.M. cover band using umlauts in their name, even though they're from Minnesota. If you're going to make an "every song sounds the same" album, keep it tight, please. Best track: There were tracks?
Sepultura
2/5
Is the ridiculous growl supposed to be masculine or something? It's awful. Best track: Jasco
Michael Jackson
4/5
A coronation. Best track: Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough
The National
5/5
Just a bunch of really smart songs with rich instrumentation that rewards multiple listens. I love this record. Best track: Runaway
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
5/5
The best YYY project by far. Karen O and the band are perfectly in sync. A modern classic. Best track: Runaway
Radiohead
3/5
Lesser Radiohead. Too much bullshit. Best track: Nude
Patti Smith
3/5
This might be a fun live show, but as an album, it falls flat. Honestly, I wanted to hate this more than I actually did. Best track: Kimberly
a-ha
3/5
Better than I expected, but still not great. Nice of them to put their hit at the beginning. Best track: Take on Me
Genesis
3/5
Seems a bit redundant to complain about this being self-indulgent. They tell you upfront what they are, so if you hit play, you accept their terms. It's still all a bit much. Whoever invented the phrase "Less is more" was talking to Genesis, and of course they didn't listen. Best track: In the Cage
Bee Gees
2/5
This might be the most boring album on the list. No wonder they pivoted to disco. Best track: Somebody Stop the Music
Primal Scream
2/5
This is neither primal nor a scream. It's also not very interesting. Best track: Movin' on Up
Dead Kennedys
4/5
Once you get past the wobbly voice, there's plenty to like here. Best track: Holiday in Cambodia
Public Image Ltd.
2/5
Weird, but not in a good way. If you're going to put your super-earnest protest poem on two consecutive tracks, maybe let somebody spruce it up so it doesn't sound like an eighth-grader with a failing grade in ELAR wrote it. Best track: Public Image
Willie Nelson
5/5
A perfect lazy Sunday album. Every track has a little surprise waiting to be discovered. It's a sign of everything wrong with the music industry that Columbia tried to re-produce this album because they thought it was too stripped down. Best track: Red Headed Stranger
Pixies
3/5
Listening to this is like trying to pay attention to your drunk friend while he tells what he thinks is an important story, but he keeps getting distracted by shiny objects and also the story was kind of lame in the first place. Best track: Where is My Mind?
Green Day
4/5
An ambitious effort. At the end of the day, the message doesn't match the delivery method, which breaks my brain a little. They play their anti-corporate Bush protest songs with the same energy they use for their odes to cocaine and masturbation. It just doesn't fit. Best track: Holiday
Tina Turner
1/5
Usually with the big names that I'm not into, I can at least understand on a cognitive level why somebody would be interested. In Tina Turner's case, I don't get it at all. She's an awful vocalist and the arrangements aren't doing her any favors either. The cover of Help! is one of the worst things I've heard in a long time. Best track: What's Love Got to Do with It, I guess
Röyksopp
3/5
There's nothing wrong with this, and in fact, parts of it are quite enjoyable. It's also just a collection of tracks specifically engineered to be licensed for cell phone and insurance ads. Best track: the one from the Geico ad
Bruce Springsteen
2/5
It sounds like he downed a fifth of vodka in between each take. Best track: Racing in the Street
4/5
I suppose they added this one because it's her breakthrough in terms of bringing feminism to country music, but Coal Miner's Daughter is right there. Best track: I Really Don't Want to Know
5/5
An all-timer. This album is the reason I've given U2 a million and one chances over the years. Best track: Where the Streets Have No Name
Simon & Garfunkel
4/5
Some of Paul Simon's worst instincts are on display, but there's enough good stuff here to rescue it. Best track: The Dangling Conversation
Youssou N'Dour
3/5
Really enjoyable, chill music. Demerits for using synths instead of real horns. Best track: Pitche Mi
Ute Lemper
3/5
This album doesn't live up to its billing. If you listened to it cold, you would never guess that the singer is the former star of a major production of Cabaret (playing Sally Bowles!). My friend compared it to a Moira Rose concept album, which is hilarious, if a bit unkind. Not totally inaccurate, though. There were a couple of tracks I really liked, but most were bland and uninspiring. Best track: You Were Meant for Me
Boston
5/5
I love it when I think I know what the best song on an album is and I find one I like even better. Best track: Smokin'
Blue Cheer
3/5
I like their sound, but the covers were poorly executed. Summertime Blues is not a psychedelic song. Best track: Doctor Please
David Bowie
4/5
Chill Bowie vibes. Perfect for a lazy Sunday afternoon. Best track: Sound and Vision
Kraftwerk
2/5
I guess you could see this was influential, since Daft Punk and a hundred other clones straight up copied them, but that doesn't make this good. Best track: Franz Schubert
Aimee Mann
3/5
My initial impression was that she was a discount Alanis Morrissette, but as the album went on, it became clear that she's got some real songwriting chops. I'm still not convinced this belongs on the list, but it was better than I expected. Best track: Mr. Harris
Charles Mingus
5/5
I feel supremely unqualified to comment on any jazz album's quality relative to another's, but I will say that out of all the jazz I've listened to for this project (including Bitches Brew and Kind of Blue, among others), this is by far the most interesting. It's innovative in all the right ways and it sounds like more than just a music theory exercise. Plus they included a contrabass trombone! Who the hell does that? An unexpected joy. Best track: Track C - Group Dancers [(Soul Fusion) Freewoman and Oh, This Freedom's Slave Cries]
Donald Fagen
2/5
Apparently this album is notable because audiophiles use it to test equipment. I'm glad to learn that it has a purpose, because I was struggling to come up with a reason that you would choose to listen to this. Unnecessarily weird. Best track: New Frontier
Alice Cooper
4/5
I had no idea this was a concept album. Reminds me a bit of the Meat Loaf album. Best track: School's Out
Haircut 100
2/5
Unremarkable 80's New Wave. You can keep it. Best track: Favourite Shirts (Boy Meets Girl)
Grateful Dead
3/5
This is not the best of the Dead. In fact, some of these tracks are just poorly executed. Disappointing, because the highs are really high. Best track: Truckin'
Alanis Morissette
5/5
Alanis Morissette was inescapable in the mid to late 90s. I'm 95% sure I never owned this album, but the 5% is there because I know several of these songs by heart anyway. A fresh listen several years later reveals something raw and brutally honest, not to mention replayable. This album was lightning in a bottle. Best track: You Oughta Know
Wild Beasts
2/5
It sounds like they tried to come up with a bunch of songs that could be played over credit card ads or perhaps the end credits of Grey's Anatomy. Best track: Two Dancers (i)
10cc
3/5
It's unfortunate that this album starts off with such a dreadful song, as it colored my perception of the rest of it. There are some tracks here I really like, but ultimately it's just too inconsistent. Best track: Old Wild Men
Fleet Foxes
4/5
I don't know if this is the album that popularized the mountain man indie folk thing that stuck around for a bit, but in my head it is. Anyway, this was really solid, but not quite the force that I remember it being. Best track: Oliver James
Janis Joplin
4/5
This is her posthumous album, and it's hard to listen without thinking about what might have been. What a powerful voice. Best track: Me and Bobby McGee
The Byrds
4/5
Really disjointed, but still a great listen. You've got to be in the mood for a little bit of everything. This is the one where they didn't need Gene Clark (or Bob Dylan). Best track: Hey Joe (Where You Gonna Go)
Deep Purple
3/5
I like Deep Purple as much as the next guy (though judging by the reviews, where too many people are under the impression that Smoke on the Water is their only song, maybe I like them better than the next guy), but come on. This thing lost steam somewhere around The Mule / Strange Kind of Woman. Sometimes the live show needs to stay the live show. Best track: Highway Star
Pixies
3/5
Flashes of brilliance. Too much filler. Best track: Velouria
Ryan Adams
2/5
I'm probably not being super generous to the guy here, but it feels like he has a checklist for what he thinks a good song is, which includes singing in a really breathy voice that will get all the girls on the quad to pay attention to you, but also somehow he's really smarmy about it? It's not objectively bad, but it's also not something I'm interested in at all. Part of it might be that this is the album with the 9/11 song on it, and I'm just over it. Best track: Nobody Girl
Buena Vista Social Club
5/5
I enjoyed every minute of this. The story of the making of the album almost seems apocryphal. Best track: Chan Chan
Dolly Parton
4/5
I kind of hate the title track. It's kitschy and belittling even as it tries to achieve the opposite. Anyway, the rest of the album is pretty great. Best track: Here I Am
Nick Drake
3/5
This one didn't work for me like Five Leaves Left did. He's written some very nice poetry and some very nice instrumentals, but they don't always complement each other. Best track: Hazey Jane I
Goldfrapp
3/5
There's obviously a lot of talent on display here, but they haven't actually included any songs I want to listen to more than once. It sounds engineered to be included in a James Bond or Tarantino soundtrack. Best track: Pilots
Leonard Cohen
4/5
The back half of this album is full of some incredible songwriting (Songs I Love), while the front half has kids singing (Songs I Hate). Best track: Famous Blue Raincoat
Stevie Wonder
4/5
Just some great tunes. Man, I love Stevie Wonder. Best track: Higher Ground
Wire
3/5
I wrote in another review that a lot of British punk bands sound like they're soullessly checking off a list to ensure they meet all the qualifications of punk, and this is one of those bands. It sounds like they clocked in at 10, drudged their way through a tedious task, and got home by 3. And then maybe they took a nap. It's not bad, it's just...boring. Best track: Mannequin
Flamin' Groovies
4/5
They've got some really cool stuff going on in that 1970s bluesy rock space, which makes me wonder why they're not more well-known. Maybe their marketing department sucked? Maybe it's the dreadful band name? Maybe it's the ill-advised, super terrible Elvis impersonation? Best track: Whiskey Woman
The Lemonheads
4/5
Very mid-90s. Gets better with repeated listens. Best track: Mrs. Robinson
Stevie Wonder
4/5
It's not his best, but it's still really, really good. Best track: You Haven't Done Nothin'
The Rolling Stones
5/5
A stone cold classic. Best opener + closer combo ever? Best track: Gimme Shelter
Ray Charles
3/5
Extremely uneven. There are some monster tracks and a whole lot I never want to hear again. Unfortunate. Best track: Deed I Do
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
1/5
A few observations: (1) I was already thinking about how much I hated this album when Elvis C dropped an N-bomb and made my head snap up from the work I was doing to Google and make sure I heard him right. Unfortunately, I did. (2) The voice is even smarmier than normal. It's so bad. (3) There's lots of wordplay that compares love and war, which is sort of a timeless trope, so fair play, but it gets icky when we compare love and fascism. Stop it. (4) "You've got Chemistry Class / I want a piece of your...mind" might be a clever lyric in someone else's...hands, but not in his (see point 3). This album sucks
R.E.M.
3/5
Not close to their best work. I tried to justify a higher score, but there's so much meh here. Best track: Radio Free Europe
Brian Wilson
3/5
Self-indulgent, backward looking, and mostly mediocre. Dennis > Brian. Best track: Heroes & Villains
The Stooges
4/5
This project is funny sometimes. I hadn't heard this album before yesterday and now I have strong opinions about which mix is best (it's the Bowie mix). Best track: I Need Somebody
Jimi Hendrix
5/5
On the short list of best debut albums ever. Nothing else to say. Best track: Hey Joe
TV On The Radio
4/5
I had forgotten how much I liked this record. In my head it was a lot of falsetto, but that wasn't as prevalent as I remembered. Several jams on here. Best track: DLZ
Ali Farka Touré
3/5
I tried to connect with this. A whole lot of sounds and harmonies that don't work for my western ears, which is of course my failing and not theirs. Still doesn't stand out for me. Best track: Savane
ZZ Top
4/5
They get lost a little in this one, but when they're on, they're on. Best track: La Grange
Scott Walker
2/5
I don't like this guy's style, but he's penned some decent lyrics. Best track: The Old Man's Back Again (Dedicated to the Neo-Stalinist Regime)
The Specials
3/5
Sometimes fun and sometimes weird in a way that doesn't make me want to hear more. They're at their best when they're imitating somebody else. Best track: Holiday Fortnight
George Jones
3/5
George Jones is one of my favorites from his generation, but this album is disjointed and weird. He's one of the ones that put out a ton of albums, and only a few of them are winners front to back. I recommend I Am What I Am if you like his voice but didn't necessarily love this album. Best track: Borrowed Angel
Coldplay
4/5
The Scientist + Clocks is a hell of a pop one-two punch. Best track: The Scientist
Kraftwerk
4/5
The first side is super weird and super long and clearly made, as my friend David says, by the German foosball players on Community. I'm not convinced that Side B is the same band. I really, really like Side B. Best track: Kometonmelodie 1
Tears For Fears
3/5
Two bangers and a lot of insufferable filler. Best track: Everybody Wants to Rule the World
Donovan
4/5
Sometimes psychedelic, sometimes medieval folk-ish, sometimes both. I dug most of it. Best track: Sunshine Superman
Dexys Midnight Runners
1/5
This guy's voice is the worst. It's like somebody dared him to use the most ridiculous delivery possible and play it straight, and he followed through, the madman. Also the saxophone player is out of tune half the time. Best track: The Teams That Meet in Caffs
Common
3/5
How you can tell this is a rap album released in the year 2000: (1) Themes of racial injustice (2) Macy Gray appearance (3) Casual homophobia and misogyny played for laughs (4) It's about six tracks too long (5) So many references to pimpin'. Best track: A Song for Assata
Fiona Apple
3/5
Very hit and miss. Best track: Criminal
SAULT
5/5
Power and resistance through understated funky grooves. Even spoken word nonsense can't bring down the vibe on this one. Best track: Wildfires
Michael Kiwanuka
5/5
So good, so replayable. New album when? Best track: Hero
The B-52's
2/5
At their best, the B-52s are the kind of fun where you can just turn off your brain and enjoy the party. Unfortunately, this album is too much dumb and not enough fun. Also the cover of Downtown is all kinds of awful. Best track: Rock Lobster
Supertramp
4/5
It feels like Supertramp understands that the cardinal sin of prog rock is excess. It's not as if they're completely innocent of this charge, but there aren't any 13-minute monster tracks that make you wonder why a producer didn't stop the madness. They get in, do their thing, and change direction before you get super tired of it. Best track: School
Quicksilver Messenger Service
4/5
A whole lot of fun jams. Best track: Calvary
The Charlatans
3/5
A mediocre mid-90s British alt rock band that sounds like all the other mediocre mid-90s British alt rock bands. I've already forgotten everything about this album. Best track: How High (I think)
Arcade Fire
5/5
This is one of my absolute favorite albums and I can't really talk about it without sounding like an insufferable douchebag. If you want my thoughts (I'm sure you don't), you'll have to get them over drinks. Best track: Wake Up
Black Sabbath
4/5
You can definitely hear shades of what they will become in this debut. Best track: N.I.B. 7/29/2022
Mariah Carey
2/5
Mariah Carey mumbling through some scales over Puffy beats is not my idea of a good time. If she's got to be on the list, why not include the one with the Boyz II Men collaboration? The stealth Bone Thugz track saves this from a 1. Best track: Breakdown
Nick Drake
4/5
Really heartfelt, really creative, really showcases some legit talent. A lot of the songs are similar, though. At one point, I thought to myself, "Hey, this is that one song," but it wasn't - I was thinking of another song of his, and it took about a minute of listening to confirm they were different. Best track: Pink Moon
Joni Mitchell
4/5
A couple of huge misses on here, but some monster tracks that just about make up for it. Best track: Down to You
Ryan Adams
2/5
Whether it's true or fair, Adams has always struck me as the kind of trust fund baby who affects a Southern accent so he can sing faux-country and then stops by his favorite artisanal froyo shop on his way back to his Manhattan apartment, which he calls a flat. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's just not something I want to listen to. Best track: Oh My Sweet Carolina
The Allman Brothers Band
3/5
You can tell when there's about a minute left in each track. It's when they realize they've got somewhere they need to go and stop wandering around on stage. I love the Allman Brothers (why is THIS album the one they've got representing them?) and I'm willing to put up with a lot of bullshit, but this is too much jam and not enough band. Best track: Statesboro Blues
Led Zeppelin
5/5
Moby Dick is the only blemish on an otherwise perfect album. Best track: Ramble On
Thelonious Monk
2/5
The kind of jazz I have a hard time appreciating. Best track: Bemsha Swing
Happy Mondays
3/5
Mostly inoffensive. Best track: Lazyitis
Herbie Hancock
4/5
Some really great chill jams. They almost lost me with the last track, but Chameleon is a banger and more than makes up for it. Best track: Chameleon
New Order
3/5
Most of it was a bad Depeche Mode impression, but there was also one instrumental that was rich and lush and amazing, which was really confusing. I thought Spotify had messed up and started playing a different album. Best track: Elegia
The Smiths
3/5
Mostly unremarkable Brit pop rock propped up by an apparently highly effective media campaign. Best track: Paint a Vulgar Picture
Pixies
4/5
The best of the Pixies. Best track: Here Comes Your Man
Bad Company
3/5
One hit wonder with a few other decent tunes. I get why it's on this list, but it's not going to make my list of essentials. Best track: Bad Company
Sister Sledge
4/5
I dug most of this. Bonus points for inspiring the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates. Best track: We Are Family
The 13th Floor Elevators
2/5
The electric jug was a mistake. Ruined an otherwise okay album. Best track: You're Gonna Miss Me
Pet Shop Boys
2/5
The song "I Want to Wake Up" has a line where the narrator starts crying when he hears the lyrics of a song, which is how I felt while listening to the inanity of Shopping, Rent, and others. Best track: King's Cross
Hole
3/5
The reason a lot of people love this (it sounds like Nirvana) is the reason I can't get into it. That, and the way she pronounces it "fem-o-nist." Best track: Doll Parts
Billy Bragg
3/5
On some level, if you voluntarily listen to Billy Bragg, you're going to go into it expecting a certain level of activism and sticking-it-to-the-man. I wasn't prepared for a full-on union anthem, though. I liked it. I imagine someone who disagrees with him or thinks he should tone it down won't enjoy their time with it, but it's a nice enough album. Best track: Wishing the Days Away
Crosby, Stills & Nash
3/5
This feels like a proof-of-concept album more than a finished product. Best track: Helplessly Hoping
Ella Fitzgerald
4/5
I listened to the 12-song version. The original album has 59 tracks, which seems to go against the spirit of this project - appreciating an album as a cohesive piece of art. Nobody buys the Gershwin songbook to sit down and listen to it for three and a half hours straight. Anyway, I have a deep appreciation for both Ella Fitzgerald and the Gershwins, and this was a great listen. Best track: 'S Wonderful
Gil Scott-Heron
4/5
I really enjoyed this. The slam poetry was the only mark against it, although that was enjoyable in its own way. Best track: The Bottle
U2
5/5
Am I giving an album a 5 because of one single? Yes, because that single is One, which is a top 5 song. I hear all of your objections - it's too saccharine, you don't like Bono, you have no taste - and I reject them all. Best track: One
Sisters Of Mercy
3/5
This is what the skids in Letterkenny listen to when they're coming down off of an intense dance-off session. Best track: Lucretia My Reflection
Johnny Cash
4/5
A bit too much banter made it into the final cut. Almost downgraded it because Folsom Prison Blues was only a partial tease. Best track: Starkville City Jail
Big Brother & The Holding Company
4/5
Come for Piece of My Heart, stay for the acid rock Gershwin number. Best track: Piece of My Heart
Brian Eno
1/5
Brian Eno's bullshit is usually mostly benign. This was an assault on my ears. Best track: N/A
Waylon Jennings
5/5
The genesis of outlaw country. Just incredible. Best track: Honky Tonk Heroes
Janelle Monáe
4/5
This was a really fun listen. I had to listen to it more than once to take it all in. Best track: Cold War
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band
1/5
There's not a single moment on this bloated mess that's enjoyable in any way. Weird for the sake of being weird. At last Zappa's shit jams. Also, that's a catfish. Best track: N/A
Suicide
2/5
I was vibing with this until the orgasm song, which killed my enthusiasm to the point that by the time the 10-minute child murder fantasy happened, I was already done. A shame, because there were a couple of decent tracks here. Best track: Cheree
Teenage Fanclub
3/5
A lot of this sounds like something that would play over the end credits of Dawson's Creek or maybe during a Ross/Rachel breakup montage. Wild that they didn't have to give Lynyrd Skynyrd a songwriting credit for the opening track. Best track: Guiding Star
The Pogues
4/5
I expected this album to wear out its welcome after about 20 minutes, and it didn't, which is a victory. Mostly it's just a lot of fun. Best track: The Body of an American (even though it's only on the deluxe version)
Wu-Tang Clan
4/5
Gloriously weird. The individual Wu-Tang albums are objectively better, but there's something about the ensemble tracks where everybody gets a verse that I really love. This is the one where they pioneered the use of soul in gangsta rap. A modern classic. Best track: Protect Ya Neck
Motörhead
2/5
The recording sucks, the live experience doesn't add anything to their music, and in any case, Motörhead has one song that they play over and over and they already have a studio album on the list. If somebody asks you to make them a list of albums they should listen to before they die, you list ten thousand albums and get a hand cramp from writing before you ever even think about this one. Best track: Ace of Spades, I guess
Femi Kuti
4/5
I have a lot of time for the Kutis. There's some repetition here and some of the songs are overly long, but it always bangs and there's always an interesting story behind the music. The horn section is on fire on this record. Best track: Plenty Nonsense
The Strokes
4/5
Perfect use of distortion. Best track: Last Nite
Madonna
2/5
Starts off strong and then turns into what you think of when you think of a Madonna album. She shouldn't be singing slow songs that expose her voice for what it is. Best track: Like A Prayer
Count Basie & His Orchestra
4/5
This was released in 1958?? Some of these tracks had some STANK. Best track: Midnite Blue
Raekwon
3/5
Is Raekwon the most boring member of the Wu-Tang Clan? All signs (including this album) point to yes. Best track: Criminology
Love
3/5
A couple of good singles. This should have been an EP. Best track: Seven and Seven Is
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
4/5
I rolled my eyes at getting yet another Nick Cave album, especially one so recent. It's his Blackstar/Time Out of Mind, and though he has a tendency to disappear up his own asshole, there's some really beautiful stuff here. Best track: Bright Horses
New York Dolls
4/5
This was an unexpected joy. Best track: Subway Train
Cocteau Twins
2/5
Lacks the mystery that made Heaven or Las Vegas so good. Best track: Donimo
Michael Jackson
4/5
There's no denying the power of the hits, but some of the deeper cuts are a bit embarrassing. Looking at you, Liberian Girl. Best track: Bad
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
3/5
I want an album where The Attractions are the backing band for almost any other singer on the planet. Best track: Pump It Up
Michael Jackson
5/5
This album really has Thriller, Beat It, and Billie Jean back-to-back-to-back. Legendary. Best track: Billie Jean
Depeche Mode
4/5
I wasn't expecting to enjoy this as much as I did. Best track: Policy of Truth
Beatles
4/5
Like many, I tend to dismiss the early Beatles catalog as a product of its time, but whenever I spin an early album up, it surprises me with its depth. Another unexpected observation: George Harrison wasn't given enough chances to write songs for this band. Best track: Don't Bother Me
Tom Waits
2/5
Tom Waits' style works for me sometimes. It did not work on this album. Best track: Heartattack and Vine
Wilco
4/5
Not my favorite of theirs, and it's a bit bloated, but still damn good. Best track: Kingpin
The Doors
5/5
Every time I put one of their albums on I come away thinking that I should have spent more time with this band over the years. Just incredible. Best track: Light My Fire
5/5
This sounds like Radiohead decided they cared about what the music sounds like and made a space rock album that isn't actually about space. Weird in all the right ways. Best track: City of Delusion
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band
4/5
This was nothing like their other album on this list, and that's a great thing. Best track: Safe As Milk - Take 5
The Byrds
3/5
Guess what, it's a Byrds album and the best songs are Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie covers. They're not at their best when they go full country, and they go full country a lot here. Best track: You Ain't Goin' Nowhere
Destiny's Child
3/5
This album might have hit better if they had spread the hits out instead of front-loading them. As it is, you get 45 minutes of filler at the end and it leaves a sour taste. Best track: Survivor
The Last Shadow Puppets
3/5
They have a neat sound but it's kind of the same trick 12 times. Best track: Time Has Come Again
R.E.M.
4/5
Super solid. Best track: It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
Yes
3/5
I liked this more than I thought I would, but it still wasn't anything to write home about. Best track: I've Seen All Good People
Pink Floyd
5/5
A problem with using popular entertainment as a medium to build up an unsympathetic figure for you to tear down later is that tons of people will take it and say, "This, but unironically." This is what happened in the small town where I grew up, where "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2" was an anti-intellectual anthem, "Hey You" was co-opted by the wannabe anarchists, and numerous tracks on this album were celebrated for lines that matched their own intolerance. For years, I stayed away from this album because of that, but eventually I came to realize that I shouldn't let others' misuse/misinterpretation of the thing affect my own enjoyment. Best track: Comfortably Numb
k.d. lang
3/5
Pleasant at times, if inconsistent. Best track: Still Thrives This Love
Robbie Williams
2/5
Minus two for making milquetoast whisper pop. Minus one for being an insufferable douchebag. Best track: Baby Girl Window
3/5
Very up and down. Best track: Nothing to Say
The Chemical Brothers
3/5
Guilty of a lot of the trappings of electronica (persistent drone in the background, random airplane/space noises, repetition and redundancy and playing the same thing over and over again), but more listenable than many others in the genre. Best track: The Private Psychedelic Reel
SZA
4/5
The features were the weakest part by far. More SZA, less other people. Best track: Drew Barrymore
Pantera
4/5
Puck off! Best track: Walk
Norah Jones
4/5
I used to be one of the bros you see on here snarking about Starbucks, but a fresh listen won me over. Great voice, great tunes. Best track: Lonestar
Devendra Banhart
3/5
Typical of the indie folk thing that was going around at the time. I'm not sure this is the best representative of the genre. Best track: Todo (sic) Los Dolores
The Killers
5/5
This album was massive and inescapable when it was released, and it's a banger. I believe that as time goes on and the band is less oversaturated in the popular culture, appreciation for this album will grow. Best track: Mr. Brightside
Neneh Cherry
1/5
She copies several of her contemporaries but never comes close to approaching their level. There are some really non-sensical lyrics in here, too. The only track I enjoyed was the bonus track. Best track: My Bitch
David Bowie
3/5
Not his best. Best track: Fame
The Boo Radleys
3/5
The Boo Radleys is a top-tier band name. Too bad the album doesn't live up to it. There are some cool moments, but overall it's a bloated album that sounds like they were making it for themselves more than anybody else. I fully support that, but...album to listen to before I die? Best track: Lazarus
King Crimson
4/5
I can't really explain why this worked for me when other similar albums haven't, but it did. I listened to it three times in a row. It would be perfect if it weren't for track 2. Best track: Epitaph
Dolly Parton
4/5
It's a shame we only got one of these. Best track: The Pain of Loving You
The Velvet Underground
4/5
I feel like most people that love Velvet Underground probably started with this one (or maybe Loaded) instead of the banana album. Classic and timeless. Best track: Pale Blue Eyes
Bebel Gilberto
3/5
Bossa Nova isn't for me, but she's got a great voice. Best track: Close Your Eyes
The Jam
4/5
Slumped my shoulders when I got this album. The other one was mediocre at best and I wasn't looking forward to the struggle. This was way better. I listened to it twice to be sure, and yep - still fun. Best track: To Be Someone (Didn't We Have A Nice Time)
The Prodigy
3/5
This album wins the award for "Most Melodramatic Title." That the album is made up of generic EDM loops further emphasizes how ridiculous it is. I wanted this to end much faster than it did. Best track: 3 Kilos
Sonic Youth
2/5
Noise rock with very little direction or momentum. Best track: Starpower
Nina Simone
4/5
Love her voice. Best track: Break Down and Let it All Out
The Avalanches
3/5
I'm of two minds on this one. On one hand, it had some great grooves that helped me stay productive today. On the other, I can't remember much about any of it, even though I listened to it twice. It's like a dream that you can't hang onto or articulate once you wake up, and it doesn't really affect your life in any meaningful way, except that you got some good rest. Also there were sequences where it felt like the soundtrack for an adolescent mind-trip montage in a low-budget Netflix show, but it also wasn't quite as interesting as all that. Best track: All of them?
Method Man
4/5
This album fucks. Wu-Tang forever. Best track: Release Yo' Delf
Frank Sinatra
5/5
A truth nobody wants to hear: the best part of any given Sinatra song is the backing band. That's not meant to slight Frank as much as it is to give the band credit. Ol' Blue Eyes might be going on about catching pennies with an umbrella or making whoopie or writers who use four letter words, and it's great because he's Frank Sinatra, but the band just doesn't give a fuck. They're going to get theirs, and they do - on every. single. track. Best track: I've Got You Under My Skin
Fugees
4/5
Killing Me Softly is an obvious banger, but the deeper cuts go just as hard. I wish we'd gotten more collaborations from this crew. Best track: Killing Me Softly
Nas
4/5
In my memory, this album was a near-perfect representation of East Coast rap, a standard by which all others should be judged. On a fresh listen, it's still really, really good. It just doesn't hold up to the legend I built up in my head over the years. Smart, with incredible rhyme schemes and flow. Best track: Represent
Kid Rock
3/5
I'm not going to pretend that this is good or that Kid Rock didn't ruin The Simpsons, but...it's also not as bad as you remember. Best track: Cowboy. I need to take a shower
Robert Wyatt
3/5
I can't figure out what this album was trying to do, musically or otherwise. Not bad on the ears, though (mostly). Best track: Sea Song
GZA
3/5
Another Wu-Tang solo album that didn't quite live up to the legend and hype I had in my memory(see also: Method Man). Best track: Shadowboxin'
Peter Gabriel
3/5
Give me Peter Gabriel's covers. You can keep the originals. Best track: Solsbury Hill
Talvin Singh
2/5
I struggled with how to rate this one. There's some stuff here that I clearly don't understand and isn't for me. That doesn't mean it's bad, but I'd be lying if I said I enjoyed it. Best track: Sutrix
Louis Prima
4/5
Super fun album that somehow manages to be of its time and also timeless. Best track: Night Train
Frank Sinatra
3/5
Less than the sum of its parts. It's like they spent the entire time deferring to each other and forgot to make great music. Best track: The Girl from Ipanema
Blur
3/5
Song 4 is a Bowie tune they adapted and somehow made super boring called M.O.R., which stands for Middle of the Road. Middle of the Road should have been the album title; with the notable exception of the woohoo song, it sounds like every other one-word-band-name 90's Britpop act. Best track: Song 2
4/5
Full of incredible tunes. Just don't listen to the words unless you want to go insane. Best track: Wonderwall
Deep Purple
4/5
Rockin', if a bit screamy and self-indulgent. I still say they're underrated. Best track: Hard Lovin' Man
The Kinks
4/5
I was trying to articulate in my own head why it bothers me that they're so obviously aping the Beatles, and I think I've decided it's because they play without joy. It doesn't sound like they're having fun; they're just...copying another band. But, I suppose if they're going to do that, they picked a good band to copy. Is that fair? I feel like I'm being a bit unfair, but also I don't think I've told any lies. Best track: Last of the Steam-Powered Trains
Björk
1/5
The best songs are the ones in Icelandic, because then you don't have to be burdened by understanding what she's saying (I kinda want to look up the lyrics to Desired Constellation, but I'm too young to have a stroke). Then again, they're also usually the ones where she decides to howl or something. I tried. Best track: Vakuro
Pink Floyd
3/5
Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd is weird, just like him. Best track: Lucifer Sam
Björk
3/5
In all of her other albums, she's either wailing or whispering, so this was a pleasant surprise. Still not something I would pick up voluntarily. Best track: Venus As A Boy
Joan Baez
3/5
Most of the songs found here have better versions elsewhere. Best track: Mary Hamilton
The Flaming Lips
5/5
I adore this album. I acknowledge that it's not for everybody and don't judge anybody for not being into it, but it hits all my buttons despite being mad corny. Best track: I can't decide. Probably Yoshimi Part 1 because it gets super stuck in my head
Neil Young
4/5
Listen, not every track is winner, but there's some good shit here. Best track: Lookout Joe
Fun Lovin' Criminals
2/5
I don't like the flow of any of the people rapping on this album, and that makes it hard to appreciate the rest of it. On paper, I should be into it, but it just doesn't work for me. Best track: Unsure. Definitely not the most popular one, Scooby Snacks. Garbage
The Electric Prunes
2/5
The best part of this album was how short it was. Best track: I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)
Jeff Buckley
4/5
Accomplishes a neat trick of being both minimalist and full of expression. Best track: Eternal Life
Burning Spear
3/5
Protest music that loses its bite upon being associated with a black nationalist who found common cause with the KKK and celebrated Jim Crow in America. Musically, his singing voice detracts from my enjoyment of the otherwise good and interesting instrumentation. Best track: Marcus Garvey, I guess
Lana Del Rey
2/5
A waste of great Antonoff songs (plus one from Joni Mitchell). Lazy whisper singing on every. damn. song. She's got a great change-up but no fastball. Best track: For Free
Lloyd Cole And The Commotions
3/5
Mostly unremarkable. Best track: Down on Mission Street
Screaming Trees
4/5
I expected a lame QotSA imitation, but it was so much better than that. Very interesting and unique arrangements. Best track: Traveler
Drive Like Jehu
4/5
Fun album, although I listened to it a few times and nothing about it really sticks in my mind. Best track: Here Comes the Rome Plows
Steve Winwood
1/5
Giving the lowest possible score here because he's got a ton of talent and chose to use it to make yacht rock, which pisses me off. Best track: none
Bruce Springsteen
4/5
This is better than I want to admit. A lot better. This is by far the best version of Bruce. Best track: Atlantic City
Black Sabbath
5/5
One of the best of all-time. Best track: War Pigs
Koffi Olomide
2/5
I can tell when something's corny, even if I don't speak the language. Best track: Obrigado
Orbital
2/5
This band put the no in techno. Best track: Kein Trink Wasser
Joan Armatrading
3/5
This feels like maybe it was a Very Important Album once upon a time. Not to me. Best track: Love and Affection
The Shamen
1/5
Pushing play on the pre-made Casio loop shouldn't get you onto this list. Best track: I think Oxygen Restriction is the one I thought wasn't terrible, but I don't want to feed this to the algorithm, so I'm not going to confirm
The Incredible String Band
1/5
I came into this knowing it was one of the worst reviewed albums on the list, but I gave this a legitimate try. I briefly considered the possibility that they were some kind of Ren Faire Tenacious D, doing bits that everybody, including the reviewers, were in on. I'm still not convinced that's not what's happening here, but they seem too earnest for that to be true. Ultimately, it's an album full of out-of-tune singing (and moaning), bad sitar playing, really dumb lyrics that occasional drift into an ill-advised pseudo-intellectual space, and a goddamn jaw harp. I tried. I really, really did. I don't get it. Best track: The Minotaur's Song. This is the one that makes me think it's an elaborate joke
Joni Mitchell
4/5
I'm blown away by her songwriting every time I sit down to listen. Best track: Amelia
Bob Dylan
5/5
Do I give this a 4 because it's not as good as his best stuff or a 5 because it's still better than 90% of the rest of this list? I think 5 is the correct choice here. Best track: Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
Tim Buckley
3/5
It's a perfectly titled album. I waffled on the grade. Borderline 3/4. Best track: G**** Woman
Faust
3/5
This feels like something I would normally eschew, but I guess I'm in a good mood today. Still not particularly noteworthy, but it was pleasant enough. Best track: Läuft...Heißt Das Es Läuft Oder Es Kommt Bald...Läuft
George Harrison
5/5
Alternate title: The Emancipation of George Harrison. The Most Criminally Underappreciated Beatle (a title that still applies even after decades of people recognizing his greatness) had a lot to get out of his system after leaving. It sounds like catharsis, and it's a lot, especially the final tracks, but it works. Best track: My Sweet Lord
Cypress Hill
3/5
The godfathers of latin rap. This album didn't hold up super well, but they deserve all the respect. Best track: Latin Lingo
Beatles
5/5
An incredible achievement. Best track: Eleanor Rigby
Fiona Apple
4/5
Unconventional in all the right ways. Best track: Under the Table
Frank Ocean
4/5
Has the feel of a modern classic. You listen to it once and you're full. Best track: Pink Matter
Throbbing Gristle
1/5
This album should be a litmus test for music critics: if you recommend this, it's clear you've lost the plot. There's nothing Important or Significant about it at all. It's just garbage. Best track: AB/7A is the closest thing to a song you can find on this thing
Syd Barrett
3/5
Crosses the line from novel to morose once you realize that Syd Barrett had actual mental health struggles. Best track: Octopus
Aerosmith
3/5
16-year-old me is disappointed I'm not giving this a higher score. Best track: Back in the Saddle
The Specials
1/5
British reggae mixed with bad ska. Best track: Little Bitch
Simon & Garfunkel
5/5
Feels like the troubled water under the bridge. Adventurous and risky. Best track: Mrs. Robinson
Pere Ubu
1/5
The only reason I didn't take a flathead screwdriver and jam it into both eardrums is that I was afraid that, this being the last thing I ever heard, it might be stuck in my head until I was able to find that final sweet release. Best track: lol no
Creedence Clearwater Revival
4/5
A bit short, isn't it? Best track: Proud Mary
Stephen Stills
4/5
Just a bunch of sweet jams by one of the best to ever do it. Best track: Colorado
Germs
2/5
I had a friend who was pretty straight-laced growing up, but the second we got into high school, he was way too into drugs and anarchy and doing spontaneous stupid shit like setting his jacket on fire at lunch or lying down in the middle of the road (also during lunch, weirdly enough). Every story he told started with how wasted he was and he wouldn't understand if you didn't think that was the funniest thing ever. Anyway, I haven't heard from or about him in 20 years, but this sounds like an album he'd be into. Best track: Lexicon Devil
Jimi Hendrix
4/5
I don't really love the tracks that stop halfway through, and then you can hear the band shuffling around, then they get started again. Maybe just do another take? It's hard to be mad at Jimi, though. Best track: All Along the Watchtower
Throwing Muses
4/5
Weird in all the right ways. Best track: Hate My Way
Pet Shop Boys
3/5
Not as bad as I expected. Wish it was somebody else singing, though. Best track: So Hard
Red Snapper
2/5
Listening to this is like when you have a rock in your shoe but it's in your sinuses instead. Best track: Keeping Pigs Together
Solomon Burke
4/5
Feels like every mediocre soul singer/group in the 60s was trying to recapture what happened here, but it's inimitable. Best track: You're Good for Me
Mott The Hoople
4/5
You can hear what they're going for. I'm still not sure I'm ever going to sit down and put on Mott the Hoople on purpose, but it's a solid album. Best track: Ballad of Mott the Hoople
T. Rex
4/5
I liked it. I wanted to love it, but it slipped into the background too often. Best track: Metal Guru
Tori Amos
3/5
Her closest analogues are probably Kate Bush and Siouxsie Sioux, but I like Tori better. I think there's an authenticity there that isn't always present with the others. Sandman reference in Track 10. Best track: Silent All These Years
Ice T
3/5
Ice-T is the O.G. of overlong albums. When you have to listen to it for that long, the tracks start to blend together. Best track: New Jack Hustler (Nino's Theme)
Bauhaus
2/5
A lot of this was actively unenjoyable (looking at you, FISH CAKES song), but there were a couple that will go into my rotation. In my quest to find something redeemable, I started listening to the drummer, who was doing some interesting things, as if he were a part of a different band in a different dimension. Best track: Mask
Frankie Goes To Hollywood
3/5
I put this album on and when I came to, I was slap fighting with the Prime Minister of Malaysia. This album was way too long. Best track: Relax
Megadeth
5/5
Pure ownage. Best track: Holy Wars...The Punishment Due
The Saints
3/5
Started strong and then progressively got worse until it ended with a chipmunk voice. Probably should be a 2, but I'm giving a 3 because of that opener. Best track: Know Your Product
Circle Jerks
2/5
This 15-minute album was made by the kids your mom tells you to ignore because they're just seeking attention. Best track: There were tracks?
Curtis Mayfield
4/5
They don't make it like this anymore. Best track: Superfly
Sheryl Crow
3/5
I wanted to like this more than I did, as I believe she's generally underrated as a singer/songwriter. However, some of the deeper cuts on this album were aggressively bad (most notably The Na-Na Song). Best track: All I Wanna Do
Leftfield
1/5
You can imagine my disappointment when I realized this wasn't 1980s pop rock group The Outfield (RIP John Spinks). Listening to this album made me want to take a bath with a toaster. Best track: N/A
The Flaming Lips
4/5
Requires multiple listens to catch everything that's going on. Super enjoyable. Best track: Buggin'
Massive Attack
4/5
I finally found an electronica album I like and it's the one everybody else hates. Oh well. Best track: Heat Miser
Earth, Wind & Fire
5/5
EWF sounds like you're on the bus heading home on a perfect fall afternoon when you have no homework and you're blissfully unaware of the problems of the world. Just endless freedom. Best track: Shining Star
Fairport Convention
4/5
There sure are a lot of bands on this list who made their hay in the 60s playing Dylan tunes. Best track: Percy's Song
George Michael
3/5
Benefit of the doubt for the first two songs, but a lot of this did not age well at all. Best track: Faith
Tortoise
2/5
The best thing I can say about this is that it was mostly inoffensive. Best track: ?
Belle & Sebastian
3/5
They're like milquetoast less-interesting proto-Decemberists. Best track: Expectations
Sex Pistols
4/5
Never Mind That Johnny Rotten Is A Massive Shithead, Here's An Influential Album. Seriously, some of this is really hard to listen to knowing what we know now about that penis wrinkle. Best track: EMI
The Rolling Stones
5/5
In my Exile on Main St. review I said that one was probably my favorite RS album. That was wrong. It's this one. Best track: Sympathy for the Devil
Led Zeppelin
5/5
Doesn't quite achieve the greatness of their best, but that's a really, really high bar. This is incredible. Best track: Immigrant Song
The War On Drugs
4/5
The War on Drugs > Nancy Reagan's War On Drugs. Best track: Red Eyes
Gorillaz
3/5
This doesn't quite hold up to my memory of it, but it's still a lot of fun. Best track: Clint Eastwood
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
2/5
If you look up "tryhard" in the Urban Dictionary, there's a picture of Nick Cave (probably). Best track: Where the Wild Roses Grow
Shivkumar Sharma
4/5
The sitar work on this album is absolutely incredible. I wish there wasn't as much flute. Best track: Rag Pahadi
Carpenters
3/5
There are songs on here that make you want to let go of cynicism, but then there are war crimes (like the cover of Help!) that remind you why that cynicism is there. Best track: (They Long to Be) Close to You
Lauryn Hill
4/5
This CD was on repeat in my car for at least a year after this came out. Revisiting it felt good. Best track: Doo Wop (That Thing)
Weather Report
2/5
We played Birdland in high school jazz band, so the opener was fun trip down memory lane...and then there was still half an hour of slap bass and sax left. So. much. hi-hat. Best track: Birdland
Beatles
5/5
This is the first Beatles album I heard all the way through and loved. As soon as you start to think you've got this album figured out, they switch it up. Best track: Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
The Yardbirds
4/5
Something you should listen to before you die? I mean, you'll be okay. It is a fun album, though. Best track: Over Under Sideways Down
Alice In Chains
3/5
The soundtrack for every movie set in the 90s. I wasn't super into them then and I'm still not now. It sounds like every song is going to culminate in the Rooster chorus. Best track: Them Bones
Ladysmith Black Mambazo
3/5
What I've read about this suggests that this group/album may not be the best of the genre, but they are the ones that popularized it. I wish I knew enough about it to suggest an alternative, so instead I guess I'll voice my disappointment that they couldn't find a better representative. Best track: Unomathemba
Fred Neil
3/5
I enjoyed this while listening, and immediately afterward I forgot all about it. Best track: Everybody's Talkin'
Creedence Clearwater Revival
5/5
Not their best, but it's still damn good. Best track: Up Around the Bend
The Streets
4/5
This was very creative and a lot of fun to listen to. I immediately put it on to listen to again. Two nitpicks, though: (1) It's so over-the-top English that it almost sounds like an American doing a parody or caricature. It's like if one of us told a bunch of stories about eating hot dogs and destabilizing Central American governments. A bit daft, innit? (2) It's the kind of art rap where they repeat the chorus way too many times on every song. Best track: Dry Your Eyes
Minutemen
4/5
It's a gimmick, but it's a cool gimmick. You don't like a track? Just wait, it'll be over real soon. My major issue with it is that a lot of them seemed like first drafts. Best track: Corona
The Black Crowes
3/5
There was a time I would have been super into this, but it didn't age well at all for me. Best track: Hard to Handle
Heaven 17
1/5
I hated every second of listening to this. Those synths are something else, man. Best track: N/A
ZZ Top
4/5
This rocks. It's awesome. There's one problem - no album that has a song like "TV Dinners" can be a 5
Suzanne Vega
2/5
Inoffensive talk singing. The lyrics aren't nearly clever or interesting enough to make up for the musical deficiencies. Best track: The Queen and the Soldier
Van Morrison
4/5
A perfectly cromulent record. Best track: Into the Mystic
Roxy Music
4/5
I had to double-check to make sure Spotify didn't make a mistake. So different from the self-titled album. Best track: Grey Lagoons
Ravi Shankar
4/5
Educational, gracious, and just straight up awesome. I wish there were some shorter tracks to accompany this so I could revisit a piece here or there without committing a quarter of an hour to it. Best track: An Introduction to Indian Music
David Bowie
5/5
This is some dark, dark stuff. The more time I spend with it, the more it feels like Bowie is just operating on a different plane than the rest of the world. Best track: Valentine's Day
The United States Of America
3/5
This album sounds like a sound engineer who was really into avant-garde bullshit got ahold of a record that was specifically engineered to sound like it came out of Liverpool. The best tracks sound like Jefferson Airplane rejects. Best track: The Garden of Earthly Delights
Can
3/5
Better than the other one. Still not something I'm going to put on on purpose. Best track: Future Days
The Pogues
4/5
For the longest time, I thought I didn't like The Pogues because their most famous song ("Fairytale of New York") is kind of lame. Turns out it's not representative of who they are, and I'm glad I didn't have to wait until now to figure it out. Anyway, they're the kings of Irish Rock for me. You can keep the other bands. This is where it's at. Best track: Turkish Song of the Damned
Arcade Fire
5/5
I can't be objective about this band. This should probably be a 4, but I look at a lot of the other 4s I've given out and this is better than that, so... Best track: Depends on my mood. Today I'll go with Windowsill
Pavement
3/5
Not great, not terrible. Maybe they should have found an actual vocalist. Best track: Here
Aerosmith
5/5
Sounds like driving with the windows down on a perfect day. Best track: Sweet Emotion
Lou Reed
3/5
Felt like it was building to something and then never got there. Best track: Sad Song
Dinosaur Jr.
2/5
Unnecessarily weird. Best track: Just Like Heaven
De La Soul
4/5
I'm super glad this is finally streaming. The world needs De La Soul. Best track: The Magic Number
Animal Collective
3/5
I didn't get this when it came out and I still don't. It's not bad, it's just...not something I would ever choose. Best track: Taste
Def Leppard
4/5
Not as fun as the other one. Best track: Photograph
Bert Jansch
3/5
Just a guy pickin' and sort of singin'. Best track: Smokey River
Laibach
1/5
Literal Nazi propaganda. "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." - Kurt Vonnegut
Slade
4/5
Really fun proto glam rock, if a bit willfully ignorant. Best track: Goodbuy T'Jane
50 Cent
5/5
One of the absolute pillars of the golden age of rap. Aftermath can't be touched. There are tracks on this album that are crazy dated, but I just don't care. Best track: In Da Club
Einstürzende Neubauten
1/5
I want - nay, demand - somebody to explain to me why this is something I should listen to before I die. I don't have a sudden appreciation for some random German guys recreating Stomp in a metal shop. This didn't unlock some revelation about my mortality or station in life. I'm not a more well-rounded person. I'm just annoyed and angry about the wasted time.
The Mothers Of Invention
1/5
There are only a couple of tracks here that can generously be called songs. It's mostly enlightened centrist anti-zeitgeist horseshit. Best track: Let's Make the Water Turn Black
Radiohead
2/5
In my mind, there are two Radioheads. Good Radiohead is thoughtful, provocative, and importantly, fun to listen to. Bad Radiohead is cloying, weirdly preachy, and gives you a tension headache if you listen to more than three songs in a row. This album is firmly in the latter camp.
The Rolling Stones
4/5
It's a demo tape where they play R&B tunes from other folks. You can hear what they're going to be, but they're not breaking new ground yet. Best track: Walking the Dog
Ian Dury
2/5
Weird guy who isn't nearly as funny or clever as he thinks he is. Best track: Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll
CHIC
2/5
The first track is Rapper's Delight without the rap, which is something I guess. Best track: Good Times
FKA twigs
3/5
A lot of buildup and very little payoff. Best track: Two Weeks
Merle Haggard
5/5
It's 30 minutes of Merle doing his thing. He gets in and gets out, leaving you wanting more. Legend. Best track: Someone Told My Story
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
1/5
Some of these lyrics are really out there. It's not endearing. I'm so glad this is my last album of his
Led Zeppelin
4/5
How do you score an album that has five all-time great songs and three that you'd rather forget? I think most bands would kill to have an album like that. For Zeppelin, it means it's one of their worst ones. Kinda feels like I'm grading on a backwards curve to give less than a 5, but here we are. Best track: When the Levee Breaks
Songhoy Blues
5/5
40 minutes of some damn good grooves. Best track: Soubour
The Damned
4/5
This album was a ride. Just when you think you've got it figured out, they switch up styles on you, and they're proficient in all of them. Good stuff. Best track: Smash It Up
John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers
5/5
Loved every second of it. Best track: All Your Love
Radiohead
3/5
A mixed bag. They mixed the good stuff in with the warbly stuff. Best track: Pyramid Song
Amy Winehouse
4/5
It's Amy being Amy. Best track: Help Yourself
Madness
4/5
Always fun when the one famous song you know from an album is not even close to the most interesting one. Best track: Primrose Hill
Manic Street Preachers
3/5
It's hard for me to get excited about a wall of sound 90s alternative album with no standout tracks. Best track: ? They were kind of all the same
By far the best thing Rod Stewart has ever done. Best track: Stay with Me
Meat Puppets
4/5
Pretty easy to see why Kurt Cobain would be into these guys. They did it better without him. Best track: Lake of Fire
Tricky
3/5
I must have said, "Wait, did they really say that?" about half a dozen times while listening. Not bad, nothing special. Best track: Black Steel
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
3/5
It's clear from reading the reviews on this site that a lot of people don't understand that "Devotional Songs" is Side B of what is now a double album. I can see how doubling the time you spend with this genre might wear on you, but as it is, it's an enjoyable enough experience. Best track: Yaad-E-Nabi Gulshan Mehka
Spacemen 3
4/5
This band came up in my recommendations not long ago and they really worked for me. Glad to see them get an entry in the list. Best track: Lord Can You Hear Me
Sonic Youth
3/5
Usually I'm a sucker for bands that have multiple vocalists, especially if they're different genders, but this is just too hit and miss for me. Pick a sound and stick to it. Best track: Schizophrenia
Cyndi Lauper
3/5
Once I started thinking about her as a Kate Bush type who can actually sing with a full voice, I had a better time. There's a lot of filler in this album, though. Best track: Time After Time
The Youngbloods
3/5
This wasn't bad. The musicians were proficient enough. The singer was a bit anemic, but not overly so. The tunes were pleasant, if a bit on the forgettable side. There was just nothing about it that made me feel like I should care.
Adam & The Ants
1/5
Not a fun time.
Kendrick Lamar
5/5
A smart, clever evolution of the G-Funk style with some killer storytelling. Modern classic. Best track: Backseat Freestyle
Calexico
3/5
Such a mixed bag. There's some really cool, interesting stuff happening, but it happens in between a bunch of 2000s indie double tracked nonsense. My question for the editors: Why include all these bands that want to be Neutral Milk Hotel when you could have just included them instead? Best track: Close Behind
Underworld
2/5
There was actually some neat ambient stuff happening in the background of some of these songs, but the whole thing was so bloated and overdone. It was like what you might get if you asked David Foster Wallace to write a book report for a second grader. Another artist that either didn't have a producer to rein them in or didn't listen to them. Best track: Pearl's Girl
Pet Shop Boys
4/5
So much better than the other one. Best track: To Speak is a Sin
Hot Chip
4/5
I found myself enjoying this more than I thought I would (like, way more), so I went back for another listen and it sounds like they're deliberately echoing some rather famous songs to get you to pay attention and then switching up the formula. It's actually kind of clever in a couple of spots. Unfortunately, there are also way too many moments that are just generic dance music, which is a shame, because I started off wanting to hate this album, and then after some time I really wanted to love it, but I couldn't quite get there. I've settled on "I'm glad somebody made me listen to this because I never would have chosen it." Best track: Let Me Be Him
The Cure
4/5
I thought I knew what this album was because I'd heard three of the tracks, but it turns out all the other ones were better. Best track: Plainsong
Hookworms
3/5
Starts off strong (ish) and peters out. Will anybody remember this album in 10 years? Best track: Negative Space
John Coltrane
2/5
If you do an album in one take and it works, that's a cool story. If you miss a bunch of notes and play out of breath for half a song, maybe you should have just done another take. Best track: N/A
Cornershop
3/5
This never would have sniffed the list if they weren't British. Best track: Good to Be on the Road Back Home Again
Eric Clapton
3/5
Some good grooves here, but I like Clapton with teeth. Best track: Let It Grow
The Stone Roses
3/5
I tried to imagine myself getting excited about this and I couldn't do it. Best track: She Bangs the Drums
The Band
4/5
Just a whole lot of jams. This album came out 4 days before Abbey Road. What a week. Best track: Up on Cripple Creek
Gram Parsons
4/5
Petition to have Emmylou Harris' name added to the album. Best track: In My Hour of Darkness
Sinead O'Connor
2/5
One of the more tedious albums on this list. It's only 50 minutes long, but it wore me down. Go be mad at the Pope and leave the rest of us alone. Best track: Nothing Compares 2 U
Blood, Sweat & Tears
4/5
Extremely unfocused, but when they decide to have fun, it's a blast. Best track: You've Made Me So Very Happy
Stan Getz
2/5
I'm trying to avoid making any major life decisions that would lead me down a path that ends in appreciating bossa nova. Best track: Girl from Ipanema, I guess
Deee-Lite
3/5
Better than I expected, worse than I hoped for. Best track: Groove is in the Heart
The Gun Club
4/5
I don't think I realized before today that Blues Punk could be a thing. I need more. Best track: Sex Beat
Eminem
4/5
This isn't so much a review as it is an introspective look at why I'm a goddamn hypocrite, so buckle up. This album is crazy homophobic and misogynist. I gave another album on this list a 1 because of one anti-semitic line, so what's wrong with me? I guess I'm more willing to excuse it when every track bangs and I listened to the album everyday in high school. Eminem lampshades his shitty attitude at every turn - "I don't really hate (slur), I'm just using this to sell records" he basically says, allowing us to excuse ourselves for enjoying it without ever having to consider why such perspectives sold so well in the first place. In a world where video games and Marilyn Manson were being blamed for Columbine, it was easy - natural, even - to slip into a "This doesn't affect me, it's not who I am" attitude concerning whatever you listened to, and if you didn't really have a problem with homophobia in the first place, it made it even easier. This album is hard to listen to today, but I can still do every word of about half of these songs and there's a part of me that doesn't want to let go of it. So, I've landed on a 4. Is it right? I don't know. Best track: The Real Slim Shady. P.S. If you don't think representation matters, take a look at how many white kids my age were suddenly into rap when Em came onto the scene
Blur
1/5
Banal. Stop trying to make Blur happen. It's not going to happen. Best track: To the End
Christina Aguilera
1/5
The audacity of naming an album that has 20 over-produced, over-sung tracks "Stripped." What did you strip? Nothing. Best track: Beautiful
Little Richard
5/5
A lot of people have tried to imitate him. Nobody's been successful. Best track: Long Tall Sally (The Thing)
Jah Wobble's Invaders Of The Heart
2/5
Didn't work for me at all. Best track: Not sure? I tried to pay attention and I couldn't
Tim Buckley
3/5
This is either a boring album buoyed by a few intriguing tracks or an interesting one weighed down by some banal shit. I guess it depends on what kind of person you are. Best track: Pleasant Street
John Lee Hooker
5/5
The first several tracks feature some incredible guests that meld perfectly with Hooker's style. It's a testament to his legend that when he goes it alone for the trio of songs at the end, it isn't a let-off. Best track: The Healer
Gang Of Four
4/5
This album sent me down a rabbit hole of how the British pronounce "migraine." Consensus seems to be that the pronunciation featured here ("mee-grain") is more prevalent among the posh. Interesting. Best track: I Found That Essence Rare
Anthrax
4/5
I live my life by a few simple rules, and one of them is: if it's good enough for Beavis and Butthead, it's good enough for me. Best track: Caught in a Mosh
The Libertines
5/5
Saw it was an English indie band and thought I knew what I was getting into, but they avoid all the pitfalls of their contemporaries. Rough around the edges but dialed in when it needs to be. I really enjoy their classic, clean sound. Best track: Road to Ruin
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
4/5
The first of the Neil Young - Crazy Horse collaborations, and it would probably be my favorite if it weren't for the violin track. This thing is anchored by four monster tracks, so I'm giving it a four. Best track: Cinnamon Girl
Talk Talk
2/5
Dear 80s bands (and everyone else), please stop including children who can't sing in your songs. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Best track: Give it Up
Hole
4/5
Just a solid power pop album. Billy Corgan helped on this and you can tell. Best track: Celebrity Skin
Beck
5/5
This is basically Odelay Part 2, and that makes 8th grade me really happy. For me, everything he's trying to do just works. Best track: Qué Onda Guero
Roxy Music
3/5
I don't think I'd remember anything about this if it weren't for the album cover.
Baaba Maal
2/5
I much preferred the album where he collaborated with Monsour Seck. Best track: Sy Sawande
Britney Spears
1/5
In the late 90s, music execs needed a nubile pop star to peddle their inane drivel, so they turned to the Mouseketeers and ruined the rest of this poor girl's life. The dudebros today who complain about Taylor Swift's music being everywhere obviously didn't have to suffer through this overproduced, oversung, written-by-committee drivel. This got popular on the strength of the opening beat to the opening song, and not enough people listened past that to see if it was worth anything before buying 100 million albums or whatever it was, and that's why the music industry bubble burst. Best track: ...Baby One More Time
Duke Ellington
4/5
The performance stands on its own, but I like to think of it as a foil to Muddy Waters' 1960 set at the same festival. The contrast of the old guard, represented by Ellington (which is, again, outstanding), with Waters' new way is striking and makes me appreciate the latter even more. Best track: Festival Junction
The Triffids
3/5
I tried to understand the effusive praise heaped upon this album, and what I've gathered is that people are really enamored with the poetry of it all. It honestly doesn't seem like anything special to me. Forgettable. Best track: Blinder by the Hour
Emmylou Harris
4/5
Beautiful and haunting. Very happy to see some of her solo work make it onto the list. Best track: Bang the Drum Slowly
David Ackles
3/5
This guy is part old school crooner, part American Elton John (or maybe I'm predisposed to think so because Taupin produced), and part folksy poet (but not in a Woody Guthrie way, more of a stuffy academic way). The effect is somehow less than the sum of its parts. Did not work for me, but I respect the effort. Best track: Ballad of the Ship of State
Deep Purple
4/5
Highway Star is the best Deep Purple song and I won't hear otherwise
Dion
2/5
It's not bad, but I don't know why anybody would put it on voluntarily. Best track: Your Own Back Yard
ABBA
4/5
I gotta say - I don't understand the vitriol. Best track: Arrival
Kacey Musgraves
3/5
I've always liked her voice whenever I've heard it, but most of this is generic Nashville country pop. A waste of talent. Best track: Rainbow
The Police
2/5
There's a really cool documentary on the making of The Emperor's New Groove called The Sweatbox that I recommend to anybody who finds filmmaking and/or the creative process interesting. The crux of it is that the Disney executives end up looking like total buffoons, which is probably why you'd have to find on DailyMotion or something if you want to watch it. Anyway, Sting is also in it, and though he actually comes out looking okay, there are some really tense scenes where he basically threatens to hold up production because he's concerned the film is going to be selling anti-conservation messages to children, and at one point he says something about colonialism, which I find hilarious given his ridiculous accent on this album. Best track: Does Everyone Stare
White Denim
4/5
The best description I've seen for this band is "a jam band that refuse to be boring." Really fun record. Best track: Back at the Farm
Morrissey
3/5
Since there is more than one listenable track on this album (don't get excited; the exact number is two), I'm going to assume this is the best Morrissey album. I'm making that assumption because there's no way that anybody is keeping track of this, just like nobody has a ranking of the best tooth to have pulled or the safest bleach to drink. I viva hate you, Morrissey. Best track: Everyday is Like Sunday
Mekons
1/5
This is a band from Leeds doing alt-country. This shouldn't exist, it definitely shouldn't be on the list, and I'm not sure I can trust anybody that thinks otherwise. Best track: Darkness and Doubt
Os Mutantes
3/5
The thing about these envelope pushing bands is they don't know or care about when to stop, and there's definitely some line-crossing happening here. When the album started, I really wanted to hate it - I even had a nice Senator Kelly zinger in the chamber - but it kind of worked! Best track: Ave Genghis Khan
Hanoi Rocks
3/5
This kind of glam rock doesn't really push me toward love or hate. It just is. This album's just kind of there. Best track: Beating Gets Faster
LCD Soundsystem
2/5
LCD Soundsystem, you're bringing me down. Also, I don't love you. Best track: New York, I Love You but You're Bringing Me Down
The Darkness
5/5
Super fun. There's a self-awareness that lands on the earnest side and really elevates the whole thing. Committing to listening to this list means having to wade through a lot of New Wave Britpop, but finding albums like this one make it worth the trouble. Best track: I Believe in a Thing Called Love
Bruce Springsteen
3/5
I...didn't hate this. What is wrong with me?? Best track: Nothing Man
Antony and the Johnsons
3/5
Antony, now ANOHNI, gives an emotional performance. As short as the album was, I found myself wishing for a smaller dose. It was too much all at once. Best track: For Today I Am a Boy
Scritti Politti
1/5
This guy listened to his contemporaries, learned all the wrong lessons, and then tried to copy them
Radiohead
4/5
Through this project, I've learned that I like Radiohead more than I thought I did. Best track: Idioteque
Björk
3/5
This really shocked me. It's Björk over strings, and she mostly decided not to use her faerie voice, so it's actually pleasant at times. Still the best parts were the ones where she stepped aside and let the musicians do their work. Best track: Stonemilker
Manic Street Preachers
3/5
This sounds like what you would use if you were making a movie set in the 90s but didn't have the budget to license a well-known band or song. Best track: (Indistinguishable)
Sparks
2/5
The falsetto bits sounded like a bad off-Broadway production. The rest was actually pretty decent, but too few and far between. Best track: Thank God It's Not Christmas
Grateful Dead
4/5
Is this the best live album on the list? Best track: Turn On Your Love Light
Skunk Anansie
3/5
It's super weird and something I certainly wouldn't choose to put on. A couple of decent tracks. Best track: We Don't Need Who You Think You Are
Madonna
3/5
I always check the tracklist before listening to an album and omit the bonus tracks or international release tracks from my listen, which is how I avoided the human rights violation that is the Madonna cover of American Pie, which I'm about 60% sure is one of the direct causes of 9/11. Best track: Paradise (Not for Me)
Bill Callahan
4/5
He's not exactly breaking any new ground, but it was pleasant and relaxing and sometimes clever. Best track: Too Many Birds
Marvin Gaye
4/5
A bit too much call and response, but it's smooth as hell. Best track: What's Going On
Orbital
1/5
The album starts with Worf talking about a time loop, and in one ear it's a certain speed while it's slightly faster in the other, so that it eventually loops around and catches the first one. Wow, congrats on your successful extra credit assignment in sound engineering class, but don't subject the rest of us to it. That's no way to treat a Son of Mogh. The only thing worse than a repetitive electronica album is a repetitive electronica album made by people who think they're being clever. Best track: The sweet, sweet silence at the end
My Bloody Valentine
2/5
One of those limp-wristed "every track sounds the same" projects that nevertheless gets held up as a genre standard for some reason. I don't get it. Best track: ?
Jack White
4/5
This album makes me think that maybe Meg tends to rein him in a bit. Great stuff overall. Best track: Love Interruption
Joe Ely
3/5
Honky Tonk with a Moog. Really unique, really interesting, but honestly it wears a bit thin by the end. Best track: Boxcars
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band
3/5
Somebody took the term "rock opera" a little too seriously. Best track: Next
Lightning Bolt
3/5
This was noisy and chaotic and I didn't exactly hate it, but at least 3 of the songs sound like an engine that won't turn over. Best track: On Fire
Peter Gabriel
2/5
Peter Gabriel seems like a solid dude, but this album is wack. Best track: In Your Eyes
Gotan Project
4/5
Gotan Project traffics in something called Neotango (or "Mystic Tango," according to the book), and I was so sure I was going to hate this based on the name and description that I put off listening to it for a day. It actually (mostly) worked. The creativity and musicianship is incredibly impressive and I actually came away from it wanting more. A really intriguing surprise. Best track: Vuelvo Al Sur
The Flying Burrito Brothers
4/5
First of all, it must be said that The Flying Burrito Brothers is a top tier band name. They're at their best when they're truly fusing country and rock, which they sometimes forget to do on this album. Sagged a bit in the middle, but finished strong. Best track: Hot Burrito #2
Lupe Fiasco
3/5
Kind of a strange decision to include the debut for an artist that found his full voice later and spent half of this one trying to be Jay-Z. Drogas Wave should have been on this list instead. Best track: Daydreamin'
The Everly Brothers
3/5
Pleasant but dated. Best track: Love Hurts
4/5
Side two was exponentially better than side one. I guess the dreams get better the longer you sleep. Best track: Street Worm
Afrika Bambaataa
2/5
How can an album that sounds like all the other albums that came out at the same time be considered so influential? Especially when they've got nothing to say? Best track: Who You Funkin' With?
The Undertones
3/5
Nothing stood out to me, but it wasn't bad. I guess you could say it was a bit Under-whelming. Best track: What's With Terry
The Cramps
3/5
Started off as a bad Elvis impersonation, but got better as it went on. More of a curiosity that something I truly enjoyed. Best track: Strychnine
D'Angelo
2/5
Generic bedroom music with a falsetto on top. Best track: Cruisin'
N.E.R.D
2/5
The target audience for this appears to be middle school, which is great, because somebody's going to get that sweet, sweet preteen money and it might as well be you. I just couldn't turn my brain off enough to enjoy it. Best track: Find My Way
Khaled
3/5
This was nice enough, but the duets plus the weird Imagine cover dragged it down. Best track: Mele H'bibti
The Fall
3/5
I know "Jon Quays" is supposed to sound like "junkies," but the way he sings it it sounds more like "donkeys," and I'd much prefer an anthem about denying an ass the right to celebrate a holiday than what we actually got. Best track: Futures and Pasts
Paul McCartney
3/5
Not his best work. Not even his best solo work. Strange inclusion. Best track: Maybe I'm Amazed
Peter Tosh
3/5
It sounds exactly how you would expect something called "Legalize It" by a former Wailer to sound. Best track: Burial
Incubus
3/5
At its best, this is really good alt-rock, but there's way too much nu-metal garbage happening. I've said this elsewhere, but if you make a DJ a permanent part of your band and don't give him any other jobs, he's going to make sure you know he's there. Nobody needs that much scratching. Best track: Drive
Holger Czukay
3/5
Usually you're in for a bad time when all Wikipedia can tell you is that it's "art rock," but this wasn't terrible. Best track: Hollywood Symphony
Skepta
4/5
In some ways (the skits + "turn up my headphones," for starters), this album sounds like it's 15 years older than it is. It still goes, though. This is the second London rapper I've really enjoyed, which makes me wonder if there's a Geordie rapper out there that should be on the list. I'll investigate. Best track: Shutdown
The Modern Lovers
3/5
A lot of the albums on this list are plagued by dumb lyrics, even (especially?) many of the ones that I really like. It's easy to overlook a line that sounds like it was scribbled on a bathroom stall if everything sounds great. I was hopeful that would be the story of this album, because I really wanted to like it. The guitarist is really talented and almost always doing something interesting...but the words are just so egregiously idiotic, and they're highlighted by their repetitiveness, making them impossible to ignore. The weirdest part of all of it is that the guitarist is also the lead vocalist. Get out of your own way, man! Best track: Roadrunner
Goldie
1/5
Two hours of drum and bass that ruined my Friday.
Traffic
4/5
It seems I haven't given this band enough of a chance. I've thoroughly enjoyed both of their albums on this list. Need to do a deep dive on them. Best track: Cryin' to be Heard
1/5
I first listened to this in a busy natatorium where I couldn't hear a lot of detail, and I tolerated it more than hated it. I revisited later to see if my first impression was good, and friend, it was not. This album sucks.
Nirvana
4/5
This album is somewhat hit-and-miss for me, but the hits outweigh the rest. Best track: All Apologies
Bonnie Raitt
2/5
She's at her best when she's doing bluesy stuff, and that rarely happens on this album. A disappointment. Best track: The Road's My Middle Name
Napalm Death
2/5
There are three complete songs on this album and 25 that are a riff with some growling. The three are actually really good. It's just too bad they forgot to finish making it. Do you think they play the 26 second songs at their concerts? Best track: Siege of Power
Julian Cope
5/5
I do not mind a long album at all as long as the music is varied, interesting, and kickass. This album was all three. Many Very Important Albums suffer from being not very listenable. To me, it sounds like he took care of the music first, then threw in the Margaret Thatcher insults ("apostolic hag" lol) later. Best track: Safesurfer
Echo And The Bunnymen
2/5
I have to work really hard to enjoy 80's English post-punk, and my motivation to give the benefit of the doubt is killed when the first and most popular (according to Spotify) track repeatedly rhymes "cutter" with "cut the." Stupid thing to hone in on, I know, but it bugs me, and at this point if it bugs me, I'm out. Best track: Gods Will Be Gods
Linkin Park
3/5
This was in my regular rotation in high school. I fully expected to listen and write a review stating that this album was the exception to the rule that nu-metal sucks. I don't know if it didn't age well or if I just didn't know better back then. Probably a bit of both. I always knew it was a bit over-the-top in the emo/angst department, but this was more extreme than I remembered. It's kind of embarrassing that this album was put out by people old enough to know better, but honestly, good for them for commanding the adolescent market. I come away from this conflicted. It feels like the album is simultaneously ground-breaking and derivative, if that makes sense. Anyway, I wanted to give a better score, but that feels dishonest. Best track: Pushing Me Away
Taylor Swift
5/5
Just a damn good pop album. Best track: Wildest Dreams
U2
4/5
There are some definite weak spots on the album, but the protest songs you've already heard are massive. Some of the deeper cuts are legit, too. Best track: Sunday Bloody Sunday
My Bloody Valentine
2/5
This band is a dude who has built his entire identity on his sick tattoos. The guitar effects are cool and all, but there's got to be something more. Best track: in another way
Grant Lee Buffalo
3/5
The first couple of tracks (give or take) have the promise of a bold, fresh Americana sound, but most of the rest of the album can't keep up. Feels like unrealized potential. Also, the singer pronounces words that end in vowels like a Brit, which is...distracting at best. Best track: Jupiter and Teardrop
Run-D.M.C.
3/5
I'm to the point where I don't really want to revisit classic hip-hop albums because I'm afraid of how well they've held up. This one was a mixed bag. Best track: Rock Box
Simple Minds
2/5
Not sure what the target audience for this is supposed to be. People who hate themselves? Best track: Glittering Prize
Sebadoh
1/5
So this guy lost creative control of Dinosaur Jr, made his own band, and then was kicked out of DJ. He should have stuck to playing bass in a decent band. Best track: Not found
Maxwell
2/5
Below average bedroom music. One or two tracks could probably be remixed into something upbeat and more interesting. Best track: Sumthin' Sumthin'
Tom Tom Club
2/5
Better than I expected, but the bar was really low. Best track: Genius of Love
Neil Young
4/5
Southern change gonna come at last. Best track: Southern Man
Goldfrapp
3/5
The first song made me think I was in for 45 minutes of "girl who sounds like a wounded bird," but she pulled out of the nosedive. Some interesting stuff, but little I'm going to go back for later. Best track: Caravan Girl
CHIC
3/5
Both better and worse than I expected. Best track: Le Freak
Cowboy Junkies
3/5
There's a certain artistry in the restraint displayed by the singer here, but it needs some contrast. The Sweet Jane cover was a perfect opportunity to get loud and nasty, but it all stayed at an intensity of 2. Best track: Walking After Midnight
Mudhoney
4/5
Proto-grunge that's really fun. Apparently this came out before their "make bad music to stick it to the man" phase. Best track: No One Has
2/5
Plus one star for the Wu Tang track. I was in Jr High when Limp Bizkit hit the scene, and I was way too into them, even for the time. This album is the one where they jumped the shark (if that's possible). If this band has to be on the list (they don't), it should have been one of the first two, and I'm not saying they would hold up at all; what I am saying is whoever added this to the list didn't have the ear of the pimply-faced target audience of the day. Btw, the outro includes a dude making fun of the band for like six minutes and it's by far the most relatable thing they've ever done. Best track: Rollin' (Urban Assault Vehicle)
John Lennon
3/5
He spent more time taking shots at his bandmates and his parents than anything else. That doesn't make it bad, but I wanted something more to hang onto. Best track: God
The Vines
4/5
Really love the sound that is somehow distinctively early 2000s and also evokes an earlier time. Good stuff. Best track: Get Free
Nanci Griffith
3/5
More fiddle, please. Best track: Banks of the Pontchartrain
Keith Jarrett
3/5
I should say this first: he's a very talented musician and this is very impressive. Okay, now: what are we doing here? Where is the arbitrary line between classical performances (not allowed) and this? If I need to listen to an album of live piano music played on a stage before I die, shouldn't it be Bach? And if there is no Bach, leave this off. Weird rules, weird inclusion. Best track: I'd be lying if I said these didn't all blend together for me
Justin Timberlake
3/5
I understand that there's been a cultural reassessment of JT in the last several years, but the fact is that most of his early 2000s stuff sounds like Axe Body Spray smells. Best track: Cry Me a River
Snoop Dogg
4/5
I usually make it a point to seek out the original tracklist, but in this case, the generator gave me a version of this album that had no skits, so I left well enough alone. Just a classic West Coast G-Funk album. Best track: Gin and Juice
The Byrds
4/5
Definitely the most ambitious Byrds album. Best track: Thoughts and Words
R.E.M.
3/5
A bit sleepy and unfocused. The two big singles from this one are overrated. Best track: World Leader Pretend
The Only Ones
3/5
An otherwise decent album overshadowed by some seriously questionable vocals. Best track: Another Girl, Another Planet
The Cult
3/5
I'm into the 80s glam rock sound, but that Born to Be Wild cover is the kind of mistake that casts a shadow over the whole project. I shudder just thinking about it. Best track: Wild Flower
Little Simz
4/5
Great flow, rewards multiple listens. A bit inconsistent. I'm guessing that by the time she's done, this won't be among her best albums. Best track: Wounds
Terence Trent D'Arby
3/5
I really enjoy The Hardline 5.0. The addition of Gen-X Davey is a huge positive and allows Bob and Corby to stay in their respective lanes. Hot dog. Best track: As Yet Untitled
k.d. lang
3/5
Some decent slow dances and waltzes in here, but the brand of honkytonk that overuses the close harmonies is never going to be one I'm into. Best track: Western Stars
Stereolab
4/5
Much better than I expected, given the name, genre, description, and just about everything else. Surprised me. Best track: OLV 26
Randy Newman
3/5
It's hard for me to take Newman seriously. It's not that he sounds like a muppet, it's just that there's some quality there that reminds me of them. So, when he puts a bullseye on the south, it's like, shouldn't you be writing stuff that goes in a kids' movie? It's not bad, it's just...Randy Newman. Best track: Rollin'
G. Love & Special Sauce
4/5
The bluesy pseudo hip hop from the early-mid 90s really works for me. This is like a stripped down Beck from his Mellow Gold era. Best track: Cold Beverage
Morrissey
3/5
This wasn't terrible, but it must be said that any enjoyment I got from this album was down to the backing band and not Morrissey himself. Best track: We'll Let You Know
Astor Piazzolla
2/5
This is allowed, but classical isn't? *dismissive wank gesture* Best track: Vibraphonissimo
The Bees
4/5
Joyful without becoming too twee. Best track: A Minha Menina
Super Furry Animals
4/5
Just a whole lot of fun. It's nice to come across a Britpop band that seems to actually enjoy playing music. Best track: Bad Behaviour
Gillian Welch
4/5
Slow does not equal boring, people. This album is full of clever imagery and allusion. She's a great songwriter. This was far from boring. Bonus points for the stealth two-parter. Best tracks: April the 14th Part 1 and Ruination Day Part 2
Rush
4/5
A fun sci-fi concept album that occasionally gets lost in itself. Best track: The Temples of Syrinx
Malcolm McLaren
4/5
The skits weren't great, but the rest of it just about makes up for it. Some great jams on here. Best track: Merengue
Peter Gabriel
3/5
Very uneven for me. Lots to love, lots to hate. Best track: Games Without Frontiers
Robert Wyatt
4/5
This is where the format of the generator does a bit of a disservice to the music. I needed more than a day with this. It's layered and nuanced, and although not everything clicked for me, there's enough meat there to grab onto that on balance, I really enjoyed the experience. Best track: Blues in Bob Minor
Ash
3/5
Sounds like the soundtrack for a late-90s movie where the popular guy helps the geeky girl see how beautiful she actually is. Best track: Let It Flow
Van Morrison
3/5
Covers outside of his usual style as part of a double live album is not really what I'm looking for when I put on a VM album, but it was well done and showed his versatility, so. Best track: Gloria
Leonard Cohen
4/5
I'm not a songwriter, but Leonard Cohen almost makes me wish I was. There are some all-timers on this one. Best track: Bird on the Wire
The Residents
2/5
The first two tracks made me think that these guys might have influenced They Might Be Giants, which turned out to be correct. That predisposes me to give them the benefit of the doubt, but boy, they used and abused that. This should probably be a 1, but the first track is kind of fun, I guess. Best track: Constantinople
Nightmares On Wax
3/5
I'm struggling to understand why this would be considered significant or important. It's decent jam music. Nothing more, nothing less
Big Star
3/5
I've listened to Third/Sister Lovers a couple of times since scoring it a 3, and I almost want to go back and bump up the grade on the strength of a couple of their better songs, but the fact remains that listening to a whole album of Big Star is a bit of a slog. Same story here. Best track: Thirteen
The Velvet Underground
3/5
It's hard to stomach a dumb spoken word track on a six-track album, but when they just play (and there's no electric viola), it's magic. Unfortunately, that's only half of this album. Best track: Sister Ray
Kings of Leon
3/5
These guys don't really move the needle for me in either direction, and nothing I heard here changed that. Best track: The Bucket
The Psychedelic Furs
3/5
"She comes in like an angel/And goes down like these flats/.../I won't give you flowers/I just wanna sleep with you" Poetry. Best track: I Wanna Sleep With You
Fatboy Slim
3/5
Each song is about a minute and a half too long. It became a slog. Get in, get out, leave them wanting more. As it is, no más Fatboy Slim. Best track: Praise You
Nico
4/5
I wasn't really into this, but about midway through something clicked and I felt like I got it. Her voice really works for me, and the songs aren't half bad. Best track: I'll Keep It With Mine
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
3/5
Maybe occasionally let the music breathe and stop inserting your Nick Cave-ness into everything. Nice album otherwise, but by the end, it's too much. Best track: John Finn's Wife
Silver Jews
1/5
Listen, if you can't carry a tune, then just write the songs and let somebody else front your band. Absolutely ruined some decent lyrics and some more-than-decent slide guitar.
Klaxons
5/5
I'm a sucker for anything that's obviously influenced by and holds reverence for good speculative fiction. I was worried that the music itself wouldn't match those high expectations, but it absolutely did. I'll be checking out the rest of their catalog. Best track: Magick
The Associates
1/5
Goddammit.
Suede
3/5
The kids these days would say this is mid. Best track: Still Life
Christina Aguilera
2/5
Christina is apparently the queen of releasing bloated, saccharine albums with ironic titles. Multiple tracks on this album have a distracting vinyl crackle that fades in and out constantly. I thought it might be a problem with Spotify, but it turns out this was an intentional production choice, which is baffling. Best track: Without You
The Louvin Brothers
4/5
This might be a tiny bit of an exaggeration, but the Louvin Brothers were the Righteous Gemstones of their day. Singing murder ballads in the gospel style is a gangster-ass move. Best track: Knoxville Girl
4/5
Some legit jams on here. War deserves more recognition. Best track: The Cisco Kid
The Prodigy
3/5
I need this band in small doses. Great for playlists, not for albums. Best track: Smack My Bitch Up
The xx
4/5
the xx at their best. Best track: I Dare You
Joanna Newsom
4/5
There were a lot of factors conspiring to make me feel annoyed with this album, not the least of which is that Newsom's voice has some Björk-ish qualities, but once I settled in, it was quite an enjoyable experience, and there's no denying the poetry of the lyrics. Best track: Monkey & Bear
The Zutons
4/5
A promising debut for a band that ultimately didn't live up to that promise. Still a bangin' record, though. Best track: Remember Me
Girls Against Boys
3/5
Guarantee their garage smells like body odor, cheap marijuana, and vomit. Best track: 7 Seas
Rufus Wainwright
5/5
This one really worked for me. Every song is expertly crafted, expansive, and poetic. It's night and day compared to the second entry. Best track: Oh What A World
Megadeth
4/5
Face = melted. Best track: Devils Island
Country Joe & The Fish
4/5
I really like their sound. The songwriting isn't that great, and maybe that's why they're not really remembered all that well compared to their colleagues. Best track: Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine
Rahul Dev Burman
3/5
Pretty sure they explicitly broke their own rules by including a various artists soundtrack album. Maybe this would have been a better experience if I'd seen the movie. Best track: Countess' Caper / Shalimar
Django Django
3/5
The influence of this album appears to be that it's been chopped up and included in a million car and insurance commercials, in which case, why should I hear it before I die? It's already been force fed to me. Best track: Wor. (HTL)
The Good, The Bad & The Queen
4/5
This was a lot of fun. I marked it for further listening later on. Did they call the queen ugly? Feels like they called the queen ugly. Best track: Kingdom of Doom
Super Furry Animals
3/5
It's always nice when a song (in this case, No Sympathy) makes you snap your head up and rewind to make sure you heard what you thought you did. In my opinion, this is a regression from their earlier album on this list. I think they started reading their own clippings, decided they were awesome, and mailed it in a bit. Best track: Juxtaposed with U
Bee Gees
1/5
Store-brand Beach Boys mixed with portentous orchestral arrangements with pseudo concept album nonsense sprinkled on top. Features some light-hearted, whimsical lyrics that don't match the instrumentation at all, which makes it worse. I hate this. Side note: It's hilarious to me that Robin Gibb left the band because his song Lamplight wasn't chosen as a single. Buddy, that song sucks. Pick your battles. Best track: You'll Never See My Face Again
Ananda Shankar
2/5
This album is billed as an innovative form of Indian-Western Fusion, but it's really just sitar covers. Best track: Snow Flower
5/5
Infinitely better than their other entry on this list. Even the couple of tracks with corny lyrics sound incredible. Triumphant. Best track: Easter Theatre
M.I.A.
4/5
I didn't like this as much as the other one, but I'm still watching her career with great interest. Best track: Sunshowers
Ali Farka Touré
4/5
This guy seems like a guitarist's guitarist. I liked the jam sessions better than the attempts at doing blues. Best track: Soukora
Marilyn Manson
2/5
I thought this might be some hidden gem I shouldn't have avoided back in the day, but irrespective of content, this sucks. Pour one out for all the anti-establishment freaks who had to pretend to like this when it was new. Best track: Mister Superstar
The Dandy Warhols
3/5
This album is very hit or miss for me. In general, I like the ones that work more than I dislike the ones that don't, but ending on a very long, apparent Frampton tribute left a bad taste in my mouth. Best track: Be-in
Pere Ubu
1/5
Irredeemable. Beneath my contempt
Ozomatli
4/5
I can (and did) listen to this all day. Best track: (Who Discovered) America?
Public Image Ltd.
2/5
Hostile to the listener. Hefty no thank you. Best track: No Birds
TV On The Radio
3/5
Groovy at points, but way too heavy on the falsetto. Best track: Don't Love You
American Music Club
3/5
I really liked the songwriting, but only a couple of the songs really grabbed me. Best track: Firefly
Dexys Midnight Runners
1/5
I hate it. Wtf is this Sweet Home Alabama ripoff? This band should be nowhere near this list. Best track: Listen to This
Dagmar Krause
3/5
An 80s jazz/cabaret send-up of some poems from Germany during the world wars. I tried to read around and find some more context to make sure I wasn't given tepid approval to some sympathizers, and I couldn't ever find the confirmation I was looking for. It seems like a lot of ruminations on how much war sucks, which yes, but at the end of the day the vocals didn't do much for me at all. Best track: I couldn't really keep up with the tracks since the version I found was all in a single low-quality Youtube video, but there was one about 2/3 of the way through that had some tremendous horn work. That one
Beck
5/5
I've been a Beck fanboy since this album came out and I'm not going to stop now. This is the first album that I distinctly remember being blown away by reading the liner notes. Best track: Devils Haircut
Stephen Stills
4/5
A whole lot of clean guitar playing and singing that sounds like it's coming from the next room. Best track: Go Back Home
Kings of Leon
3/5
The opening to Sex on Fire made me physically cringe, so I guess I'm not over that song being everywhere. On the whole, not bad, but also why is this here? Best track: Idk. Cold Desert
Ms. Dynamite
2/5
Sounds like she's trying to emulate Lauryn Hill but she's constantly flat, bending the notes, or both. Best track: Dy-Na-Mi-Tee
King Crimson
3/5
This one didn't work for me like In the Court of the Crimson King did. A lot of experimentation, little actual innovation. Best track: Book of Saturday
The KLF
2/5
I know it's not rational, but it bothers me when the Brits pronounce "tacos" like "tack-ohs." Have some g.d. respect. Best track: Church of the KLF
Turbonegro
5/5
Easily one of my favorite punk albums from this project, if not THE favorite. They've successfully blended genres to make a cool new things while also respecting their roots. Best track: Get It On
Fatboy Slim
2/5
I don't know who needs the Fatboy Slim origin story, but it ain't me. Best track: Going out of My Head
Sonic Youth
3/5
Four really good tracks and too much filler and nonsense. Best track: 100%
Coldcut
2/5
It's a dance album with a million samples. I can't really tell where other artists' creativity ends and theirs begins, plus house is just never going to move the needle for me. Best track: Stop This Crazy Thing
2/5
It's really okay to leave a crappy album off the list even if it hit #1 in the UK. Best track: The Look of Love - Pt. 4
Soft Machine
2/5
It's jazz noodling. They've got skills, but who cares? Best track: Slightly All the Time
Doves
3/5
I really wanted to like this because I really liked The Last Broadcast. This wasn't that. Shame. Best track: Catch the Sun
CHVRCHES
4/5
Vsvally, synth-pop albvms don't do mvch for me becavse of the pavcity of uariety. The bvbblgvm chorvses are not vnlike the vnceasing hvm in the backgrovnd of Christopher Nolan's Dvnkirk, except that I'm qvite svre he was actvally trying to make his avdience vncomfortable. Howeuer, this albvm was a departvre from the rvle. Best track: Recouer
Machito
5/5
The depth and quality of collaborators on this album is mind-blowing. I'm not anywhere close to a jazz aficionado and I recognized quite a few names. Their influence is definitely felt. Wall-to-wall wailing. Best track: Tin Tin Deo
The Thrills
3/5
Small town country by way of California by way of Ireland sung by a borderline prepubescent whisperer. Makes sense for the final credits of a Friday Night Lights episode, but a whole album of it is just exhausting. Best track: Big Sur
The White Stripes
5/5
There is no way this is objectively their best album, but it's probably my favorite. It's weird and so different from everything else that it's obviously a bit of a passion project, and that comes across. Not everybody can pull this kind of nonsense off. Best track: My Doorbell
John Martyn
3/5
I can see why somebody might be into this, but that somebody is not me. The best parts are the ones where he noodles around and has fun. Less so with the poppy stuff. Best track: Small Hours
The Beta Band
3/5
I really waffled on the score here and ultimately settled on a lower one because it has a feeling of incompleteness about it that I think can be attributed to the weak lead vocals. Go get yourself a frontman and you've got a good thing going. Best track: Squares
LTJ Bukem
1/5
This one wasn't on Spotify, so I had to go to Youtube and every video in the playlist was filled with effusive comments praising the genius of the work. I can only conclude that there must be an equivalent of color-blindness for music and since I can't hear green, I don't get it. Because I really don't get it. Best track: The Western
Kings of Leon
3/5
I feel like Jeff Winger when he found out the study group was abbreviating Barenaked Ladies' name. Wow, three albums for Kings of Leon, really? They're so fundamental that we're celebrating their debut album? Call me a selfish, jaded ass, but that's too much. Best track: Joe's Head
The Coral
3/5
Weird in a mostly good way, but wears out its welcome very quickly. Best track: Shadows Fall
Scissor Sisters
4/5
I hate the Comfortably Numb cover, but everything else is great. Best track: Take Your Mama
Giant Sand
3/5
The talk singing works in small doses. This was not a small dose. Best track: Shiver